The Foundation, with the aim of fostering the intellectual and cultural development of the students of the University of Patras, will organize an exhibition in honor of the distinguished philhellene Robert McCabe, featuring the presentation of the album “GREECE AFTER THE WAR – THE YEARS OF HOPE” along with a simultaneous exhibition of the photographs included in it, at the Archaeological Museum of Patras.

The organizational responsibility for the event has been undertaken by the Ioannou & Euterpis Topalis Foundation, in co-organization with the National Historical Museum in Athens (to which Mr. McCabe has kindly donated his photographic archive), and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Achaia.

The exhibition’s opening, which will run until the end of October, and the presentation of the album will take place on Friday, July 4, 2025, at 6:30 PM.

During the presentation of the album in the auditorium of the Archaeological Museum, Mr. McCabe will be accompanied by the two authors of the texts included in the publication: Professor Panagiotis Roilos of Harvard University and Chair of Modern Greek Studies “Giorgos Seferis,” the esteemed journalist and co-author Katerina Lymberopoulou, as well as Assistant Professor of Art Theory and Criticism at the Athens School of Fine Arts, Kostas Ioannidis. The exhibition will also include the presentation of a contemporary artwork by Yiannis Papadopoulos, inspired by the photographic material of Robert McCabe.

A few words about the distinguished artist:

Robert McCabe was born in 1934 in Chicago and grew up in New York. His engagement with photography began very early—at the age of just five, when his father, publisher of the New York Daily Mirror, gifted him a Kodak Baby Brownie. This small camera became his first “window” to the world.

His first visit to Greece took place in 1954, when he was still a student at Princeton University. Ten years after the withdrawal of the German occupation forces and five years after the end of the Civil War, McCabe came for a two-week trip. However, during the very first week, he and his brother Charles made a spontaneous but decisive decision: to cancel their remaining visits to Egypt, Italy, and France, and stay in Greece.

The country he encountered then was poor, still deeply marked by war and hardship. Nevertheless, he was impressed by the enthusiasm, warmth, and generosity of the Greeks who, despite their difficulties, managed to preserve their human dignity. Those two weeks essentially evolved into a lifelong connection with Greece.

Over the years, McCabe traveled from Epirus to Crete and from Pylos to Rhodes, capturing through his lens a Greece in transition: the era of hope, reconstruction, outreach, and new beginnings. His photographs are not merely documents—they are windows into 20th-century Greece, moments when the world was changing. This exhibition, “Greece After the War – The Years of Hope,” is an important document of modern European history—a testimony to how photography can become a vehicle of memory, culture, and profound human connection.