Book of George Lanitis.
Foreword by Dilys Powell.
Introduction by Andreas Christofides.
FOREWORD
It is always a pleasure to recognise friends and friendly places, and Mr. Lanitis's
beautiful photographs of Cyprus have given me moments of pure delight; for here
are the figures and the scenes I know. I have travelled by that bus which you see
standing in the village street. Only the other day, it seems, I was talking to that
solitary man treading his grapes. The girl holding the pack-animal and the goat
is an acquaintance of mine. And so it goes on, memory after memory f~om this
land of vineyards and orange-groves and majestic landscapes: the graceful lines
of the carque in the harbour; the immemorial gestures of the net-mender, the potter,
the reaper; the proud authority of the Church. It is a land of contrasts: on
the one hand the headless antique figure by the ruined columns, on the other the
neon lights and the cup on the table in the town cafe; not only the monumental
groups of black-scarfed village women, but the elegances of high fashion on the
beach or in the city; both the hands which tend the grapes, and the machines
which suddenly bring together tradition and the new world of technology.
Especially it is a land of unforgettable faces: the grave child, the old wrinkled
woman, the smiling old man.
And now I have to make a confession. I have never been in Cyprus. Many times
I have planned to go there; yet something has always deflected me towards
Athens, or the Cyclades, or Crete, or the Argolid, or some other region of Greece
which I have already visited. Life is short, the journey is long, and it is not easy
to deny oneself another look at the well-loved places. But now with these photographs,
so reminiscent of the Greece where I have lived and travelled, Mr. Lanitis
has persuaded me that the scenes in his delicately composed landscapes and
townscapes are in fact familiar, that I have truly encountered the people of his
sympathetic portraits.
After this book I begin to fancy that I have known Cyprus all my life.
DILYS POWELL
Λανίτης Γιώργος
