Catalogue for the exhibition of photographs
by Robert McCabe at the Acropolis Museum

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Calotypes, daguerreotypes, black-and-white or color photographs from machines that trace the course of technological development from the fourth decade of the 19th century to today’s realm of digital technology and mobile phones: the battle rages between the traditional and the modern, what is new in each generation, an eternal struggle that has no winners and losers since the “before” and “after” are in fact one—part of a continuous flow.

What makes the difference? The tool used or the worldview of the creator? The click of the magic box of the camera and the mobile phone, or the lightning-flash of the eye of the person in command of them? Both, since the camera itself also represents a development of the creative worldview.
 

And Art, this overarching complex structure (which in its photographic incarnation possesses the power to convey History’s documentation as well as its dreams), through photography records portraits of nature, people and their works, as well as the monuments that both constitute and contain memory.
 

However much immortality the art of pho- tography can offer, its consequence is none other than the arrested moment of an image, captured by the soul and the eye of its creator, the photographer.
 

What then, are Robert McCabe’s photographs?
 

The capture and imprinting of the essence, in black and white or in color, of a young man in love, who, passing through on long journeys of life and knowledge, was captivated by the spell of “Calypso”, by a country called Greece, and who in turn captured pieces of Greece’s soul, ancient and modern.

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By Nikolaos Chr. Stampolidis, General Director, Acropolis Museum