Melina Mercouri - FREE GREECE rally, London 1968
The date was Apr. 22nd, 1968 and the place was Trafalgar Square, London. My focus was the exiled Melina Mercouri, Greek actress, singer, activist, politician. I had seen her in the film Never on Sunday some years before and, like any twenty year-old male who’d studied Classics and Art History, was promptly enraptured by her. She was in England for a stop on her international FREE GREECE rally campaign to inform the world of what was happening in her country.
In Greece, it was the time of “the Colonels”. The country was being run by a military junta, a dictatorship characterized by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents. Wikipedia aside, I know this because I was there, having spent the winter on the Island of Rhodes, returning from Greece to London only three weeks prior to this event. It became dangerous for Greeks to be themselves, and instead were obliged to inform the military and/or police on the activities of people like me. The music for Never on Sunday was composed by Manos Hadjidakis, one of many prominent artists black-listed by the junta; it was illegal to play or listen to his music in Greece. I met a woman in Ioanina who’d had a neat triangle of skin cut from the centre of her cheek.
These were the things Melina wanted to subvert, and the junta responded by revoking her citizenship and confiscating her property. It took another six years, but democracy was finally re-established, helped in part by the Turkish invasion of Cypress. The complicated resolution won’t be discussed here, but the new government survived and in 1981 Melina became Minister of Culture, a position she held until a year before her death in 1994.
Here I am, sitting on the parapet with many others who arrived early for the same purpose (to the ongoing infuriation of thousands in the square below), photographing the most important event of my burgeoning love affair with the camera, and my shutter fails. These images were all I managed of Melina, so when I got back to Canada six weeks later I ditched the old Pentax and have been with Nikon ever since.
Melina Mercouri - FREE GREECE rally, London 1968
The date was Apr. 22nd, 1968 and the place was Trafalgar Square, London. My focus was the exiled Melina Mercouri, Greek actress, singer, activist, politician. I had seen her in the film Never on Sunday some years before and, like any twenty year-old male who’d studied Classics and Art History, was promptly enraptured by her. She was in England for a stop on her international FREE GREECE rally campaign to inform the world of what was happening in her country.
In Greece, it was the time of “the Colonels”. The country was being run by a military junta, a dictatorship characterized by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents. Wikipedia aside, I know this because I was there, having spent the winter on the Island of Rhodes, returning from Greece to London only three weeks prior to this event. It became dangerous for Greeks to be themselves, and instead were obliged to inform the military and/or police on the activities of people like me. The music for Never on Sunday was composed by Manos Hadjidakis, one of many prominent artists black-listed by the junta; it was illegal to play or listen to his music in Greece. I met a woman in Ioanina who’d had a neat triangle of skin cut from the centre of her cheek.
These were the things Melina wanted to subvert, and the junta responded by revoking her citizenship and confiscating her property. It took another six years, but democracy was finally re-established, helped in part by the Turkish invasion of Cypress. The complicated resolution won’t be discussed here, but the new government survived and in 1981 Melina became Minister of Culture, a position she held until a year before her death in 1994.
Here I am, sitting on the parapet with many others who arrived early for the same purpose (to the ongoing infuriation of thousands in the square below), photographing the most important event of my burgeoning love affair with the camera, and my shutter fails. These images were all I managed of Melina, so when I got back to Canada six weeks later I ditched the old Pentax and have been with Nikon ever since.