The Donkey Trail: When the 1960s Aegean Belonged to its Children

In this pre-touristic Aegean, the islands were often isolated and economically fragile, yet possessed a profound societal cohesion. Credit: Robert McCabe

In Robert McCabe’s evocative frame, we are transported to a Paros that existed agelong earlier the whitewashed minimalism of modern luxury boutiques and the hum of rental scooters. Captured successful the aboriginal 1960s, the representation serves arsenic a poignant model into the “innocent era” of the Aegean—a clip erstwhile the bushed of beingness was dictated by necessity and assemblage alternatively than the seasonal tides of wide tourism.

The country features 4 children and a donkey, a tableau of agrarian self-reliance. A young lad leads the carnal with a dependable hand, portion 3 others thrust successful woven panniers—baskets usually reserved for transporting grapes, olives, oregon water. There is simply a striking deficiency of artifice here; the children’s expressions are focused and earnest, reflecting a puerility wherever play and chore were inextricably linked.

Credit: Robert McCabe

The stone-paved alleyway and the weathered textures of the gathering down them talk to a Cycladic aesthetic calved of scarcity, not design.

In this pre-touristic Aegean, the islands were often isolated and economically fragile, yet possessed a profound societal cohesion.

Today, portion Paros remains beautiful, overmuch of its rugged authenticity has been polished for the planetary traveler. McCabe’s photograph reminds america of a slower, tactile satellite wherever a donkey thrust done a quiescent colony was simply the mode home, not a photograph opportunity.

Robert McCabe: A chronicler of mid-century Greece

Robert McCabe is acold much than a casual observer; helium is possibly the astir captious ocular chronicler of Greece’s mid-century transformation. Arriving successful the Aegean arsenic a young pupil successful 1954, McCabe utilized his Rolleiflex and Plus-X movie to papers a civilization that was inactive mostly untouched by the globalizing forces of the 20th century.

His enactment is defined by a heavy respect for his subjects—capturing the “dignity of the everyday” successful the faces of fishermen, farmers, and children without the voyeuristic lens often recovered successful question photography.

Related: Sailing Into Summer: Robert McCabe’s Post-War Greece