“Lively Matter: A photographic documentation of Santorini between 1954 and 1964” by Robert McCabe

An isolated Santorini, where people inhabited the arid, volcanic land, coexisting with the historical myth of an impending catastrophe.

Vassaltis Vineyards and The Vasilicos Santorini celebrate their 10th anniversary with the solo exhibition “Lively Matter: A photographic documentation of Santorini between 1954 and 1964” by Robert McCabe, curated by Christina Petkopoulou.
The official opening will take place on Saturday, May 31st, in the presence of the artist and the exhibition team.

Vassaltis Vineyards and The Vasilicos Santorini celebrate their 10th anniversary with the solo exhibition “Lively Matter: A photographic documentation of Santorini between 1954 and 1964” by Robert McCabe, curated by Christina Petkopoulou.
The official opening will take place on Saturday, May 31st, in the presence of the artist and the exhibition team.

The exhibition features works from the photographer’s early visits to what was then a remote island. Through his lens, McCabe captured its people, its distinctive terrain, and the layered rhythms of life — elements that form a living body with its own pulse. His work now returns to the island to inhabit the Vassaltis Vineyards, where the surrounding Thiran countryside seeps into the winery’s production spaces through its outward-looking architecture.

This exhibition focuses on how McCabe’s lens captured the traces of the Santorinians’ symbiotic relationship with their geological, mineral, and marine environment, and the vitality of the island’s material reality. More with the sensitivity of a naturalist than the gaze of a traveler, McCabe documented mid-20th-century Santorini, where its inhabitants lived in close relation with their arid, volcanic landscape — coexisting with fantasy, lived experience, and the historical myth of an ever-looming catastrophe.

Stone, ash, sulfur, the densely flavored fruits of the land, the unfathomable depths of the Aegean, and the wind itself appear as active subjects of this local, grassroots history — alongside sailors, laborers, women workers, fishermen, animals, and archaeological remnants.

Thus, McCabe’s photographs become, in essence, “portraits” of materialities — of both human and non-human subjects that brought life to this particular piece of earth. The photographic work on view is a tender archaeology, documenting the existence of a community that grew and survived in the interstices of ecology and economy. Now historical, McCabe’s work underscores a lived acceptance of fragility and a cultural animism that energized lifeforms and shaped an entire era in the history and modern culture of the Cyclades.

The exhibition is held under the auspices of the Municipality of Thira and is part of the “2025 Year of Authenticity” initiative. It is accompanied by the publication “Santorini: Portrait of a Vanished Era”, 2020, by Robert McCabe and Margarita Pournara, published by Patakis Editions.