Art is about capturing the unimaginable. I don’t remember who said it, maybe it’s my inspiration, but that’s exactly what I was thinking when I recently wandered through the exhibition Fred Boisson and the Mediterranean. A Photographic Odyssey” presented at the MOMus-Museum of Photography of Thessaloniki until February 12, 2023. The Swiss photographer Fred Boisson (1858–1946) captured in his work an idea that, at least in my opinion, seems elusive. Boisson toured Greece in the early 20th century and photographed it with a shocking and almost childlike innocence. He allows his gaze to be distracted from the ephemeral only when he recognizes the eternal in this touch, in order to give the viewer the opportunity to enter the image and live it in the present.

I am standing in three photographs taken in the Pylos area in 1912 during one of his many trips around the country. The photographer captured the beach during a storm, the lagoon and the local resident Gero Nestor. The photographs, of course, have no other color than black and white, and yet they are full of intensity and light. Since I am very familiar with this place, I immediately recognize the places where the photographer was standing. Today, one part represents the territory of Natura and remains unchanged, while the other part is transformed into tourist furniture during the summer months. However, it can be said that the photographer stopped time and managed to literally and metaphorically place Greece in an archetypal peaceful frame. The exposition included 110 projects and multimedia applications. He follows the path of Fred Boisson’s photographic eye, his sources of inspiration and his long-standing ambition to make photography a fine art. According to MOMuS, “on the winding path from the Alps to the Sinai desert, the Mediterranean Sea occupies a central place, which, like another ordinary place, becomes the backdrop of the photographer’s own photographic odyssey in the footsteps of the Homeric hero. Boisson’s work was fueled by his collaborations with writers, archaeologists, politicians and geographers and contributed to the formation of a new perception of the Mediterranean as a single geographical and cultural entity. Photographing Mediterranean locations for more than three decades, he confirmed, among other things, the geopolitical transformations of Greece and the Balkans. Scenes from the everyday life of ordinary people, monuments and landscapes to be deciphered, invite visitors to take a journey through places that now have a shape that at the time still seemed mythical.”

“The purpose of the exhibition,” writes its curator Estelle Sauyet, assistant professor of geography and environment at the University of Geneva, “is to expand the view through the work of the Swiss photographer, highlighting both the breadth of his career and the close links he has built between Switzerland, Greece and the Mediterranean world. The exhibition and publication reflect Fred Boisson’s intention to expand the material and symbolic boundaries of photography. Moreover, they show how Greece gave him the opportunity to distinguish photography as an art form in its own right.”

Analog culture has left almost indelible memories on our retinas.

“The joint presentation of two important collections of Boisson’s work, the archives of the Bibliothèque de Geneva and the Central Library (Library Tricoglios) AUTH,” adds exhibition co-curator, art historian Areti Leopoulou, “represents an important collection” of documentation and highlighting of a photographic wealth that has already transcended national borders and targets. Boisson’s photographic work was of strategic importance to Greek national aspirations in the early 20th century, and at the same time represents the aesthetically perfect artistic work of a photographer impressively active for half a century.

I lean over the massive volume of Greece Through Mountains and Alleys, displayed in a display case next to the photographer’s other publications, and am captivated by the materiality of the artist’s gaze.

I think that digital culture leaves an intangible imprint of numbers on us, while analog culture imprints almost indelible memories on our retinas. The printed image, the book, the paper belong to a fading mythology that takes on a religious dimension. The artists of the last century offer us the privilege of a cool look. Even in the storm there is beauty. If we clean our dusty lenses, if we remove the distracting environmental noises, perhaps we, too, can see faces and landscapes as innocently as Fred Boisson.