574 b&w photographs. Distributed by University of Exeter Press. Photography as a technique is, in essence, a process of faithfully depicting the objective world. With the aid of technology, however, and especially through the sensitisation and more profound activation of visual perception, it was rapidly transformed into a creative art. This book presents a superb sample of the work of Takis Tloupas, the unique photographer of Larissa, who served photography as a creative art on the basis of his personal aesthetic and his profound belief in the importance of research. The book is therefore much more than an album of fine photographs. It attempts to demonstrate how he viewed nature and men through his photographic lens, in order to provide us with the truths of a world that the rest of us have not learned to see. Takis Tloupas was born in Thessaly, grandson of a coppersmith and son of a carpenter, and lived and worked there in Larisa. He followed the profession of his father initially, and woodcarving brought him a comfortable wage. A trip to Palaios Pandeleimonas with the Mountaineering Club introduced Takis to photography. The club president was a keen amateur photographer who showed Takis his camera and how it worked. When Takis returned to Larisa he bought his first camera, and took his first photographs - of his sister, Avyi. During a trip to Paris in 1952, Takis made the decision to change how he made his living. On his return to Greece, he bought a Vespa scooter and began his journey from Thessaly. He undertook commissions from the Forestry Inspectorate, the Mechanical Agriculture Department and the Red Cross. In 1960 the Vespa was replaced by a Deux Chevaux, and he continued to travel the whole of Greece, taking over 30,000 photographs of what he saw on his travels, of people and their lives. But it was Larisa that he photographed most as time went by, the city in which he was born and lived.
