Continuing Work On The Fred Winter Archive

"Sillyon, “Those who arrested me”!" Winter 1957

It's been a while since I've updated you, the blog readers, on my work with Professor Fred Winter's collection of photographic negatives. For those who are new readers to the blog, many months ago when I first started volunteering at the CIG I was shown a collection of negatives donated to the CIG by Professor Winter. These negatives came from all of the travels Professor Winter made to Greece since 1957. The collection is fairly well labeled, but still needed a little straightening up and needed to be databased.

The future of the project is looking brighter and brighter each time I take a look at the collection. Not only is this collection full of wonderful examples of architecture from in and around Greece, but it also has some great information about what archeological study around Greece was like for Professor Winter. There are also some examples of what life was like in Greece from 1957 to the present.

Thessaloniki, Winter 1968

I imagine that this project might take several years to complete, since there are many thousands of negatives to sort, but already there have been some offshoot projects that have come about. Personally, I've started a project where I select some of the photos shot by Professor Winter in the early part of his career and attempt to re-take them in present day Greece. I've managed to shoot some work in both Athens and Thessaloniki with great results. I am also working on a paper that will be presented at the colloquium in memory of Professor Winter in June.

The goal of organizing and promoting this wonderful, and large, collection of photographs is first and foremost to create a database for future academics to use as reference. However, this series can also provide more modern historians a look into the recent history of Greece, and the archeological work of Canadian academics.

Chris Stewart