Fred Boissonnas - Greece Index

Fred Boissonnas, photographing Greece in the beginning of 20th century

Fred Boissonnas Swiss-born , was a photographer who during the first three decades of the 20th century worked intensively and methodically on depicting Greece by means of thousands of photographic plates, becoming thus the most influential photographer in Greece during the midwar period.

During the first half of the 20th century, Fred Boissonnas traveled extensively to Greece and other regions such as Asia Minor, Thrace, Northern Epirus to take photographs of landscapes and of everyday people. The practices and traditions of Greek everyday life were thus aptly depicted and represented in detail for the first time.

An unknown detail from the life of Boissonnas is that mountaineering in Greece began, essentially, on 2 August 1913 with the first ascent of the highest peak in the country, Mytikas (2,917m), on Olympus by the Swiss climbers Fred Boissonnas and Daniel Baud Bovy with a guide from Litohoro Christos Kakalos, a violinist and hunter of wild goats in Olympus.