From the shores of the Black Sea to the mountain villages of the Pontic hinterland, through ruined churches, silent monasteries, and houses that still “speak” Greek through their ruins, a journey begins. A journey of memory, filled with images, losses, and traces of life, undertaken not by professional historians, but by two women driven by a deeply personal motivation.
Pontus, through the lens of Elpida Athanasiadou and Varvara Charalambidou, unfolds in the exhibition of photographs and heirlooms entitled “Anastoro kai Arothymo” (Recounting and Remembering), which has been hosted at the Centre for the History of the Municipality of Thessaloniki (KITH) since yesterday and will remain open throughout January.
The two women are educators from Thessaloniki who, for the past 23 years, have travelled annually to historic Pontus. They have traversed the region in its entirety, photographing, documenting, and collecting material related to the Hellenism of the area. “In addition to photographing the regions, they gather evidence and information about the Greek presence there, for example by searching antiquarian shops for traces of Greeks that have fallen into obscurity over the years,” explains Anestis Stefanidis, a member of the faculty of the Centre for the History of Thessaloniki, speaking to the Athens–Macedonian News Agency.
As he notes, the two educators have presented the exhibition in the past in other cities in Greece and Germany and recently approached the Centre for the History of Thessaloniki, which considered it its duty to showcase it. “So that it would not consist only of photographs, through our discussions with them we realized that within their social circles there are also documents and heirlooms that people keep in their homes,” Stefanidis points out. “We found this deeply moving, because these people arrived in Greece persecuted and destitute, and yet they carried with them an icon of the Virgin Mary or a saint from their homeland. Thus, the exhibition is enriched with such heirlooms,” he adds.
Accordingly, the exhibition features women’s headscarves, an apron—known as a detsim—as well as deeply charged personal objects. Among them is a pocket watch that belonged to the grandfather of one of the two women, who was killed during the persecutions. The watch survived, was brought to Greece by his sisters, and remains in the family to this day. A special place is also held by an icon of the Virgin of Kazan, in the Russian style, bearing witness to the ecclesiastical and cultural influences present in Pontus.
The photographs, on the other hand, depict Greek houses and villages, the Monastery of Panagia Soumela as it stands today, locations in Trebizond and Kerasounta, the place of origin of one of the creators, as well as images from the entire coastal Pontus, from its western edge to Rize, and from the mountainous interior. It is a mosaic of places and memory, organised “by region,” as Mr. Stefanidis emphasises.
For the Centre for the History of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, hosting the exhibition is not only a matter concerning Pontians. As he points out, Thessaloniki is a city of people with origins from many different regional groups of Hellenism. “Anything that preserves historical memory falls within the duties and interests of the Centre for the History of Thessaloniki,” he stresses, underlining that the institution was founded precisely to highlight such memories, whether they come from Pontus, Epirus, Crete, or the Peloponnese.
Within the framework of the exhibition, particular emphasis is also placed on the monasteries of Pontus. Beyond the well-known ones, such as Panagia Soumela, Saint John Vazelon, and Saint George Peristereotas, dozens of other monasteries remain unknown, ravaged, and abandoned, scattered throughout the region. These will be the focus of a lecture by Varvara Charalambidou, which will accompany the exhibition and is scheduled for Wednesday, 21 January, at 7:00 p.m.
The opening of the exhibition “Anastoro kai Arothymo” took place on Tuesday afternoon at the Centre for the History of the Municipality of Thessaloniki (Hippodrome Square). The exhibition will run until 30 January 2026.
