The Books

This book is sure to change the image of Athens for all those who either inhabit or visit the city. Innumerable albums have already been published on Athens but none has the original approach of Nikos Desyllas. The photographer has discovered areas of the city that still retain the elegance of a bygone age. Handsome neo-classical buildings which we pass every day but never notice, moments in Monastiraki, shopkeepers in the old market and sellers of salepi and glassware. He "teams" modern glass buildings with old mansions in a brilliant way whilst, at the same time, portraying the bustling life of the city that is familiar throughout the world.

"Athens: A city which has lived amid the rhythms set by its periods of upsurge and recession; a city which blends its contrasts, a city which never sleeps because it does not forget -and indeed, whose inhabitants have never allowed it to be forgotten" (Athina Schina).

"The whole Athens area is spread out in the pages of this book: From the Odeum of Herodes Atticus to Pireaus, from the Acropolis to Sounio, from the Monasteries of Kesariani and Dafni to Marathon. Today, as the city experiences the dawn of a new century, we see it in all its splendour with the traces of its history stamped indelibly upon it, Athens inspires awe and admiration - and places on us the burden of preserving a priceless heritage" (Athina Schina).

click to view photos

Epirus is the second album in the series on Greece. Encompassing 160 or so photographs, the camera lens of Nikos Desyllas captures the beauty of the Epirote landscape in a unique way.

"Here, today's visitors -like the travellers of bygone centuries - can study the history of Epirus and discover its footprints on the very ground they tread: Ancient ruins, Byzantine churches, stone bridges, imposing villages. They can also explore murmuring forests and woodlands, lofty mountain peaks and deep valleys forged by legendary rivers all around the marvellous Epirote landscape, in its inexhaustible diversity and richness of colour." (Christoforos Milionis)

If you are a lover of tradition and have never had the chance to explore the mountains of Epirus, to perceive the natural beauty of the landscape and to discover, at first hand, the nobility of its people, then the photographs in this book represent both a perfect rendering as well as a consummate "guide" to the region.

click to view photos

The Sporades are probably the least known of all the Aegean Islands with their beautiful green hills, turquoise waters and glorious beaches. The unique architecture of the island houses, with their multi-coloured shutters and ceramic tiled roofs, combines with the pine-trees that dominate the landscape, to harmonise with the colours of the sea that is strongly reminiscent of the Ionian. Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonnisos and Skyros. Each has its own identity and adds its own brush-stroke to the canvas of the Greek landscape.

click to view photos

The deepest, most sparkling emerald green waters are to be found in the Ionian Sea and on each of its seven islands there are remnants of many different civilisations.

"Isolated from mainland Greece for centuries, these islands lying between the East and West have their own unique traditions in art, poetry and music. This rich artistic heritage, influenced by diverse cultures, led to the creation of a very unique Greek civilisation" (Nikos Moschonas).

This album is dominated by the colours of the Ionian Sea. The region is particularly well known to photographer Nikos Desyllas, who was born in Corfu and was therefore able to discover and record, with exceptional sensitivity, the profound beauty of the Ionian Islands. Ancient windmills and local laundresses, clothes hanging out to dry across the picturesque narrow streets of the old villages. Easter and the local band sauntering through the town, a multi-coloured landscape stretching above the dazzling emerald green sea, are just some of the images that dominate the photographic material of this book.

click to view photos

"For forty centuries the Aegean Sea has flown through our veins. Issuing from the ancient world and traversing history, it has shone forth to the valleys and the mountain tops of the world, preparing the moral and spiritual path of modern man.

This is the birthplace of epic and lyric poetry, of humanism, of the yearning for adventure and the eternal search for truth." (Menelaos Mountes)

The first in a series of albums on Greece, this is a bestseller in the field of photographic albums. First published by Synolo in 1993, View to the Aegean is now in its fifth edition.

The volume includes 144 photographs filled with the light and colour of the Aegean. The book offers the most representative view of life on the islands and seashores of Greece on the market today. Through the photography of Nikos Desyllas we have the opportunity to travel down the stone-paved streets of picturesque villages, experience the mystery of ancient sites, dive into the deep blue waters of the Aegean Sea and live the simple everyday life of the local Greek people.

click to view photos

Sited at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Thrace has experienced shifts in population, the influx of immigrants, enemy attacks and foreign occupations. Today, the region of Thrace that belongs to Greece is the Thrace of the Aegean, of the Rodopi Mountains and the Nestos and Evros rivers.

The variety and importance of the natural landscape in Thrace is to be found in its hilly mountainous regions, dense forests bordering rivers, in wetlands and on the seashores. Here, caves, natural springs and a great number of areas of unique natural beauty, play host to rare species of European reptiles and birds of prey- some of which are already endangered and are only to be found in Thrace. The region is indeed blessed and in the context of modern world crisis, it stands out like a last Utopian land.

With photographs by Nikos Desyllas, placed alongside historical accounts and texts by the people who live and work in Thrace today, Synolo Publications propose a journey through this colourful and varied land.

click to view photos

The Peloponnese is a region of outstanding and diverse beauty. Here the traveller encounters impressive mountain peaks, orchards, olive groves and towering rocks above the sandy beaches of the Ionian Sea and the blue waters of the Aegean. Appealing to widely differing tastes, it is a wonderful area of Greece to explore.

"Pelops, the son of Tantalos, king of Lydia, came to Pisa in Elis and with his swift steeds won the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of king Oinomaos.

Pelops became eventually the ruler of all the land beyond the Istmus and gave it its name: Peloponnesos.

The fragrance of citrus blossoms fills the air and wild poppies set the fields ablaze. In this sun-baked land men and women have lived,realised their destinies and their passions and created their own unique civilisation" (Thanasis Valtinos).

click to view photos

This latest album is published in a larger format than the rest of the books in the series and it is on a par with the highest international production standards. The volume contains photographs from regions throughout Greece, specially selected by the photographer for their great aesthetic and artistic interest. It would make a perfect business gift for your clients, as well as generate excellent promotion for our country abroad but, above all, it is a book that all Greeks should read.

"Naked we found ourselves on the pumice stone
watching the rising islands
watching the red islands sink
into their sleep, into our sleep".
(George Seferis, Nakedchild. A' Santorini).

The photographs of Nikos Desyllas show a different kind of journey. We set out, devoid of pre-conceptions, to look at islands, mountain peaks, rocks,the colours of the sea and the trees. We need nothing with us on our trip.

Light and colour are sufficient -our only luggage on a difficult journey over mountains, through ravines, across seas and up steep cobbled roads. The slightest movement appears to complement the landscape and its light. Even the darkness of the shuttered windows, the sunless mountain slopes and lowly workshops, last remnants of folklore and stubbornness, add their own brush strokes to the colourful canvas of this country.

click to view photos

The travelling reader encounters many different seasonal landscapes. He sees the face of Autumn as he walks through the virgin forest of Phraktos, the lofty mountains of Olympus, snowcapped like Vasilitsa in Grevena or brilliant green like Grammos. He will also come across the Prespa lakes and the deep waters of the Aliakmonas river. Elsewhere he might find a golden beach gently caressed by the sea. He will confront history at the archaeological sites of Vergina, Pella, Philippoi and Dion.

Lovingly-built houses at Arnaia and Eleftheroupolis. The consummate skill of the artist, expressed in the design on a wall at Siatista. Elaborate Byzantine churches. Candelabra embroider the half-light enveloping the icons. Located in the middle of the sea is the "Garden of the Virgin", where the imposing domes of Mount Athos are surrounded by blessed, carefully tended trees in bloom.

The travelling reader will also celebrate the grape harvest at Naoussa and during carnival time he will come face to face with Jannisseries and Boules.

In the fabled, hospitable land of Macedonia, history is to be found everywhere - between the stones, in the water, on the fertile land and in the sky.

click to view photos

One could say that the scale of old Greece is preserved in the general atmosphere of the country. Possibly not in cosmopolitan Syndagma Square in Athens, but certainly in the old commercial centre of the historic city, a few hundred meters away. If we move beyond the confines of the city and travel out into the countryside, we will find the atmosphere of a Greece that we all thought was lost for ever -inside an old coffee shop, between the old fridge, the wall clock and the oval- framed photographs of the owners' antecedents.

This idealised image of a Greek landscape which, with a few small changes, can be found almost anywhere in Greece, is almost as archetypal and romantic as it sounds and its description is virtually identical with that of the collective view of the quiet life of the past. Today, the emotional impact of these glimpses of traditional urban and rural Greek life, assume a special importance. Not only because this way of life has been disappearing over the past 50 years, thereby provoking waves of nostalgia, but primarily because this way of life continues to nourish the thoughts of many people, as well as the image and, in the final analysis, the identity of Greece itself.

Greece changes colour from season to season, according to which angle you see it from and moves forward in time, enriched by centuries of tradition. Beyond the tourist stereotypes and advertising slogans, Greece possesses a lively, thriving core, which adorns its path. From the Greece that once existed and then vanished, to the Greece which followed and is continuously changing, comes the Greece which combines yesterday and tomorrow, in a fresh interpretation of the land.

Nikos Vatopoulos
Journalist-Author

click to view photos