Costas Balafas (1917-2011)

Costas Balafas was born in 1917 into a farming family of the mountain village of Hosepsi (now named Kypseli) in Epirus (NW Greece). He attended high school in Athens and it was there that he used a camera for the first time on an excursion to Mt. Parnes. 

He subsequently attended an agricultural college in Janina, the capital of Epirus, at which he then worked until the outbreak of the war. In Janina he acquired a Kodak Junior camera and learned the arts of developing and printing from Apostolis G. Pantazidis, a professional photographer in the city.

At the end of 1940 a box of Ferrania Capelli film was found in the wreckage of an Italian bomber which had been shot down outside Janina. Balafas bought this otherwise unobtainable film stock for a few kilos of cornmeal. This and a German Robot camera, which he obtained from an Italian soldier, were the tools with which he produced at considerable personal risk a unique photographic record of the resistance against the occupation. As a member of the 6th Brigade of the 85th Regiment of the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) he took part in military operations on the mountains and captured the everyday life of the guerrillas (marches, military exercises, battles), the villages burned by the Germans, popular celebrations during the Liberation of Ioannina (October 1944) as well as the protagonists of these events. He entrusted this material to a family friend, who hid it under the wooden floor of a house in Janina, where it remained for the next thirty years.

During the Civil War (1946-49) and until 1951 he worked as an official translator of the British Mission travelling throughout the country. Subsequently because of his good command of English he was employed in the design department of the American firm Embasco Service Inc., a predecessor of the Public Power Corporation S.A. (DEH), where he remained in this post until his retirement. During the years he was employed in the company he photographed stage by stage the construction of the Acheloos river dam at Kremasta, producing what may be the first methodical photographic record of an important public project in Greece.

In 1954 he became a Member of the Greek Photographic Society (EFE) and participated in exhibitions and competitions, while at the same time his photographs were published in the quarterly Greek Photography.

Costas Balafas belongs to a group of photographers whose human focus had a decisive influence on Greek photography in the post-war period. In his work, which is a unique record of Greek history and society, the protagonist is man in his everyday struggle for survival. A special place is given to the inhabitants of the remote villages of his native Epirus and the proud womenfolk burdened with the struggle for communal survival in the harshest conditions. His choice of subjects has a continuing value since he records them with an intense awareness that traditions and customs are passing away with time and the effects of modernisation. The style of his photographic work has been determined by the harsh conditions of his childhood and the struggles of the Greek people for dignity and independence.

The political situation that prevailed in Greece after the civil war meant because of the subjects of his photographs that his wartime work had to remain in obscurity up until the end of the dictatorship in 1974. Later particularly with the increasing interest in the history of Greek photography, his work became known through exhibitions and publications which he personally curated.

In 2008, three years before his death, Costas Balafas, entrusted his photographic work to the Benaki Museum in the conviction that it would be appropriately conserved and exhibited. This archive includes 15,000 negatives, original prints, 72 cinematographic films as well as oral recordings and written memoirs. It is a worthy addition to the history and cultural heritage of his country as well as to the history of photography.