ASKI’s photographic archive depicts historical moments and persons from the Metaxas dictatorship period until the post junta era. Mostly, these photographs depict the German Occupation, the Resistance, the Greek Civil War and the post-war Greece. These photographs have been collected from various sources, but the original core of the photographic archive comes from the Greek Communist Party (KKE) Archive and contains, mostly, photographs of the 1940s.

Brief description:

• The Metaxas Dictatorship (1936-1940) – Appearances of Ioannis Metaxas, pro government rallies
• Photographs of occupied Greece (1941-1944): snapshots of executions and tortures, documents on the disasters caused by the Italian-German troops.
• Portraits of executed from various parts of Greece
• Photographs from the activities of the Greek People’s Liberating Army (ELAS) General Headquarters and regional troops
• Photographs from ‘Free Greece’, political activities of the National Liberation Front (EAM)
• Lebanon Agreement, Caserta Conference
• Liberation, December 1944
• Photographs from the Greek Civil War: everyday life of the Greek Democratic Army (DSE) soldiers, portraits of the military leaders, snapshots from the war preparation
• Photographs from the visits of foreign delegations to the DSE
• Photographs from political rallies from the 1950s until the military dictatorship: political demonstrations, peace marches, Grigoris Lambrakis’ funeral, demonstrations on the Cyprus issue
• Photographs of Greek political refugees from East European countries
• Photographs from exiles, camps and prisons from various parts of Greece
• Photographs from demonstrations against the military dictatorship adroad (1967-1974)
• Photographs from the post-junta period (political events, workers’ demonstrations, students’ movement e.t.c.)

This photographic archive is continuously expanding with personal archives and collections that are donated to ASKI. We could mention the archive of Nikos Margaris with unique photographs from Makronissos and other exiles, the archive of Georgoulas Beikos that contains photographs from his missions, as a journalist, to the USSR during the 1960s, the archive of Mitsos Partsalidis, as a politician, from the mid-war period in Kavala until the post-junta era, as well as the archive of the trade unionist Orestis Chatzivasileiou that contains unique photographs from the workers’ and union movement in Greece, e.t.c. Special parts of the photographic archive are the archive of the Anti journal, as well as the archive of the newspaper Sosialistiki Allagi. Both focus on the workers’ rallies during the 1980s. A significant part of this archive was digitalised and is now available on the ASKI’s website through the program “Digital Photographic Archive” (which was financed by the J.F. Kostopoulos Foundation).