Spyros Meletzis was born in Imvros. In the search of better chance and life he learns the art of photography from A. Panagiotou in Alexandroupoli. With his coming in Athens he works in several photography shops and for 9 years as an assistant in the well-known photographer George Boukas. There he perfects his technical training. In 1937 he begins a photographic travel in the Greek countryside and in 1939 he makes his first exhibition/exposition in "Parnassos" which makes him more widely known. His integration in the working movement as a member of ΚΚΕ from the early days makes him with the start of resistance to go up in the mountains, where he photographs our fight for national freedom and its protagonists. This piece of his work is insuperable and the dynamics of the subject and his glance. This material remains unexploited up to the change of regime in 1974 that begin the exhibitions and the publications, the publications and the hommages and the photographer can finally reap his laurels. Apart from his first material and the material of resistance, after a break when he was exiled for his beliefs, he continues photographing without a pause. He plays a leading part in the foundation of E.F.E. to 1952. His photograph is realistic but also symbolic, and this way of seeing does not abandon him even in the photographing of antiquities that is his passion from 1968 until 1975 and generally in whatever he photographs, even though his photographs did not reach again the dynamics of photographs from the resistance.

Photos by Spyros Meletzis