Staveris Archive

The Onassis Foundation, in collaboration with influential photographer Spyros Staveris and an expertized team of archivists, curators, and digitization specialists, has organized and digitized the Staveris Archive – an image archive of daily life, of the worlds of labor, entertainment, and politics, of Athens that is at once old-fashioned and modern, carefree and restless, subdued and rebellious, glamorous and marginal. The archive also includes images from Greece and abroad, drawn from the photographer’s travels and commissions spanning across time.

Approaching the city and its society as a dynamic space of coexistence and transformation, the Onassis Foundation, through this initiative, brings together the bulk of images that emerged from the photographer’s personal explorations and distinctive gaze, as well as from diverse collaborations with publications from the 1980s to today. A ‘mural’ reflecting the transformations of society takes shape, without a blueprint, through the accumulation of images born of Spyros Staveris’ wanderings and collaborations.

After completing the research project “Spyros Staveris 1980–today: A visual history of contemporary Greece,” the Onassis Foundation is proceeding with the completion and release of the Staveris Photographic Archive, aiming not only at its preservation but also at ensuring free access for all who wish to delve into the social and political history of Greece over the past four decades and beyond.