[Young couples in traditional costume]
Gender information of the object:
Color:
Type:
Primary Material:
Place:
3D object:
Source:
Apostolos Ververis collection at the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia
The Greek professional photographer Apostolos Ververis arrived in Cyprus in the summer of 1954 on an assigned expedition to create a collection of photographs that proved Cyprus’s cultural associations with Greece. The advocates of his journey, namely the Greek government and the Cyprus archbishopric, were meant to use these images to raise awareness over the island’s Hellenic cultural heritage to support the Greek Cypriot demand for self-determination. Scenes of daily life, including representations of Greek Cypriot customs and traditions, received Ververis’s prime attention. Even though he captured real-life scenes taking place out in the countryside and village settings all around the island, he also produced staged compositions aiming for a Hellenocentric documentation of Cypriot heritage. Young men and women dressed in traditional Greek Cypriot costumes were photographed in scenes of traditional dancing, a wedding celebration in Famagusta, and daily activities presenting Greek Cypriots living a traditional way of life. The ‘Amalia’ dress is the protagonist in many of Ververis’s staged compositions as it is linked with the name of Amalia, Queen of Greece, and was established in urban centres in Cyprus by the mid-19th century as a variation of the Greek national costume.
Sources:
Roditou, Christina. “Images of Cyprus in the 1950s: Perspectives and Narratives.” In The Many Face(t)s of Cyprus : 14th Meeting of Postgraduate Cypriot Archaeology, edited by Dorina Glörfeld, Kim Kittig, Bärbel Morstadt, and Constance von Rüden, 163–81. Bonn: Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, 2019.
———. “Representations of Heritage and Identity in 1950s Cyprus: Digital Approaches to Apostolos Ververis’s Photographic Archive.” Unpublished PhD thesis, The Cyprus Institute, 2020.
Code:
298
Translator:
Euphrosyne Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou
Christina Roditou
Description:
Young men and women dressed in traditional Greek Cypriot costumes. The male costume comprised of a shirt, a vraka (baggy pleated breeches) of black cotton, zostra (a coloured silk sash), yelekkin (sleeveless waistcoat), a black headscarf, and podines (top-boots). The woman on the left is wearing the traditional 'Amalia' type costume that was linked with the name of Amalia, Queen of Greece (1836-1862), and was established in urban centres in Cyprus by the mid 19th century as a variation of the Greek national costume. It is made up of a dress or skirt above a silk chemise and a felt or velvet jacket, the sarka, with gold ornamentation. The waist was girded by a belt with a filigree clasp or a tied sash with embroidered ends. The head was covered with scarves or, in the urban original, with a fez. The Cypriot fez, which was different from the one used in Greece, had two black silk tassels, a short one which was fixed to the crown and covered the whole cap in a radial pattern, and another one falling to the shoulder on the side. The fez was decorated with garlands of flowers made of tiny pearls and braided with silk. The woman on the right was wearing a costume with sayia, a long-sleeved coat open down the front, worn over pantaloons decorated with woven embroidery. On her waist she wore a colourful headscarf tight as a sash.