elc team
Three generations of Magnum photographers-Constantine Manos, Nikos Economopoulos, and Enri Canaj-meet at MOMUS Thessaloniki in an exhibition exploring street photography, Greece, and the Balkan experience
The exhibition “Three Roads: Constantine Manos, Nikos Economopoulos, Enri Canaj”, presented at MOMUS–Thessaloniki Museum of Photography in co-organization with the Benaki Museum from 19 February to 24 May 2026, is both an original curatorial proposal and a tribute.
Through the lens of street photography, the dominant artistic tendency of the medium in the second half of the 20th century the exhibition bridges three generations of creators, united by their relationship with Greece and their membership in the renowned Magnum Photos agency, which since its founding in 1947 has significantly shaped the visual history of the modern world.
Greek-American Constantine Manos, in the 1960s, traced the country like a contemporary Odysseus, seeking to mend the latent wound of migration. Nikos Economopoulos crossed Greece and the Balkans during the final two decades of the 20th century, focusing largely on fragile minorities and unsettled communities. Greek-Albanian Enri Canaj, in turn, revisits in the second decade of the 21st century a homeland he did not fully experience firsthand, yet one deeply imprinted in childhood memory and still alive in family narratives.
The vivid expressiveness of the snapshot, the devotion to the everyday, non-privileged individual, the Balkan region as a matrix of shared experiences and traumas, and the sometimes melancholic austerity of black-and-white tones in a contemporary world now dressed in saturated color—these elements unite the three generations of photographers, who maintained successive relationships of mentorship and support. Moving through the exhibition, visitors also spontaneously detect historical, aesthetic, and social affinities in the work of the three artists, as each distills from the world the essential core of life and photography.
The works of Constantine Manos and Nikos Economopoulos come from the Photographic Archives Collection of the Benaki Museum, Athens.
Curator: Heracles Papaioannou, Curator, MOMUS–Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Artists’ Talks
MOMUS–Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Warehouse A’, Pier A’, Port of Thessaloniki)
Friday, 20 February 2026, 19:00–21:00
Photographers Nikos Economopoulos and Enri Canaj will discuss their work and the dimensions of street photography in the contemporary era with the exhibition’s curator, Heracles Papaioannou, and the public.
The discussion will be held in Greek, without interpretation.
Participation with exhibition admission ticket.
A few words about the phtographers
Constantine Manos (1934–2025)
Constantine Manos was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Greek parents. At the age of nineteen, he was hired as the official photographer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He studied English literature and worked in New York as a photographer for Esquire, Life, and Look.
From 1961 to 1963, he lived in Greece photographing the series A Greek Portfolio, published as a book in 1972 and awarded at the Arles Photography Festival and the Leipzig Book Fair. This body of work secured his acceptance as a full member of Magnum Photos in 1963.
His photographs are included in major institutional collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the George Eastman House in Rochester, and the Benaki Museum. In 1982, Manos transitioned from black-and-white to color photography. He published American Color in 1995, followed by American Color 2 in 2000. In 2003, he received the Leica Medal of Excellence.
Nikos Economopoulos
Born in the Peloponnese in 1953, Nikos Economopoulos studied law and worked as a journalist in Parma, Italy, before dedicating himself to photography. He joined Magnum Photos in 1990 upon the recommendation of Constantine Manos, and his photographs began appearing in newspapers and magazines worldwide.
During that period, he traveled extensively across the Balkans. This series received the Mother Jones Award for work in progress. After completing the Balkan project in 1994, Economopoulos became a full member of Magnum Photos. His book In the Balkans was published in 1995 in New York and Athens.
In the 1990s, he began working on themes of borders and border crossings, photographing residents along Cyprus’s “Green Line,” irregular migrants at the Greek-Albanian border, and the mass migration of Kosovo Albanians. In the mid-1990s, he turned his lens toward Roma communities and other minorities.
In 2002, the retrospective publication Economopoulos, Photographer was released and later presented as an exhibition at the Benaki Museum in 2005. He has since transitioned to color photography and spends much of his time traveling, teaching, and photographing around the world.
Enri Canaj
Enri Canaj was born in Tirana, Albania, in 1980. He moved to Greece with his family in 1991. He studied photography in Athens and in 2007 participated in a British Council migration program, attending a year-long workshop with Nikos Economopoulos.
Since 2008, he has collaborated with major national and international media outlets and is now a member of Magnum Photos. Based in Athens, he has exhibited widely in Greece and in Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, and has held a solo exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival.
His work has received numerous awards and distinctions and has been published in media such as Time Magazine, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, Financial Times, Newsweek, National Geographic, Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, and Arte TV.
He has collaborated with institutions and organizations including Princeton University, UNICEF, Melissa – Network of Migrant Women in Greece, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Solidarity Now, the European Parliament, and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
