Sports

Sports is one of the most important categories in the collection. It consists of 2,095 photographs, covering the period from 1952 to 1988.

Almost all sports photographs until the late 1960s are images from the Olympic Games of Helsinki and Rome, the ceremonies of the lighting of the flame, and the qualifying matches of the Greek National Football Team. After 1969, the year of the European Athletics Championship in Athens, there is a steady flow of photographs of domestic sports activities. The sport that continues to stand out is football, while basketball and volleyball follow. Sports reportage was (and still is) one of the most popular in photojournalism, and that explains the large number of photographs in the collection. Furthermore, during the dictatorship, many photographers, due to censorship and because of increased public interest, turned to sports photo reporting.  The numerous photographs from the European Athletic Championship of 1982 in Athens and the first post-war Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952 stand out. Lastly, photojournalism also records the first incidents of illegal and violent behaviour in stadiums, a phenomenon dubbed “hooliganism” by the press of the era.