Pharasa (modern Çamlıca): Greek children
| Department | Archive |
|---|---|
| Collection | BSA SPHS Image Collection |
| Reference No. | BSA SPHS 01/6184.C3597 |
| Level | Item |
| Description | Glass negative, quarter plate size, a copy negative taken from a photographic print pasted on a SPHS index card. |
| Place |
Pharasa Cappadocia |
| Dates | 1910-1911 |
| Donor/Creator |
Dawkins, Mr Richard McGillivray |
| Project | Greek Dialects in Asia Minor 1909-1914 |
| Scope and Content | Part of a collection of images from Dawkins' travel to Cappadocia and Pharasa between 1909 and 1911. The original description in the SPHS register reads: "Pharasa Greek children". |
| Notes | Date based on Dawkins' travel to Cappadocia to study Greek dialects between 1909 and 1911. In the introduction of his 1916 book A Modern Greek in Asia Minor ( p. 1), he mentions villages by the year he visited and plates at the end of the book are maps of the area. The image was used for the 1936 Exhibition of Minoan Civilization and the first 50 years work of the BSA at Burlington House, London (337f). The image appears in the SPHS Slide Set (no author), ca. 1932. Modern Greek Country Life, slide number 29. |
| Further information | Scenes from Modern Greek Life Historic images often show scenes from modern life. These are not modern in the current sense, but reflect a time they were taken. Some were captured unintentionally, recording an aspect of contemporary activity while composing scenes of other interest such as ancient or historical monuments. However, many were taken with the express purpose of recording folk life, part of a trend in the latter part of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. The process of categorizing these ethnographic scenes of everyday life in image collections reflected contemporary folklore categories: material life (eg. domestic architecture, dress, craft and agricultural production), social life (eg. games, festivals) and spiritual life (eg. superstitions, religious activities). However, a significant idea encapsulated in these ethnographic images was the 19th-century concept of continuity - relics or survivals - of ancient social life and practices in the present. In Greece, this concept of continuity was notably promoted by the scholar of folklore (laographia), Nikolaos Politis, and held by many British classicists and archaeologists of the time. In fact, the Irish classical scholar, J.P. Mahaffy encapsulated this idea in his 1876 travel book, Rambles and Studies in Greece: "Everywhere the modern Greek town is a mere survival of the old". These survivals were often linked to classical literature, cult and myth by scholars of the Greek world. It is clear that these images are not simply quaint historical scenes, but they embody principles inherent in the discipline of Hellenic Studies in the recent past. |
| Reference |
1927 JHS 47: 13th accession to 1913 slide catalogue. lxiv.SPHS C.3597. Link to article 1936 Exhibition Catalogue. 76.No. 337f. |