H Ellada tou Taki Tloupa

574 b&w photographs. Greek language text. Distributed by University of Exeter Press.

Takis Tloupas was born in Thessaly, grandson of a coppersmith and son of a carpenter, and lived and worked there, in Larisa.  He followed the profession of his father, and woodcarving brought him a comfortable living; until a trip to Palaios Pandeleimonas with the Mountaineering Club introduced Takis to photography.  The club president was a keen amateur photographer who showed Takis his camera and how it worked.  When Takis returned to Larisa he bought his first camera, and took his first photographs—of his sister, Avyi. During a trip to Paris in 1952, Takis made the decision to change his profession and on his return to Greece, he bought a Vespa scooter and began his journeys around Greece. 

He undertook commissions from the Forestry Inspectorate, the Mechanical Agriculture Department and the Red Cross.  In 1960 the Vespa was replaced by a Deux Chevaux, and he continued to travel the whole of Greece, taking over 30,000 photographs of what he saw on his travels, of people and their lives. But it was Larisa that he photographed most as time went by, the city in which he was born and lived.

This book is much more than an album of fi ne photographs. It demonstrates how Takis viewed nature and men through his cameras lens, and provides us with the images of a world that the rest of us have not learned to see.