PHOTO ESSAY:

The other Ac rop ol i se s :

multi-temp oralit y
and the persistence
of the past

Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

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 The other Acropolises 759

In the beginning,
there is the ascend.
The uphill journey to get closer
to it. To overcome its aura, to
conquer ‘the unique apparition
of a distance’ (Benjamin 2008a:
23).
And along with it, the urge to
capture it through your camera,
to magically transform it into a
picture.
But what is it that you will
photograph?
The marble blocks and the
columns, some still in place,
some taken apart and now
tightly arranged in rows (like
well-behaved schoolchildren on
a parade) ready for their reas-
sembly, and some conserved,
reconstituted and restored,
more clean and more white and
more ancient than before?
Or the national flag, reminding
you that you are entering the
most sacred national monu-
ment of the country?
Or would you rather go for
the information panel, which
neatly tells you ‘the story’?
And would you frame out the
cranes and the other restoration
machinery, which has been here
for ever, now almost as much
part of the Acropolis landscape
as the Parthenon itself?
You may have come to look at
antiquities, but we will make
sure that it is modernity’s sights
(our modernity or yours?) that
you will encounter in every
step.
It is going to start raining in a
minute.

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 760 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

Watch your step,

or you will fall and break
a limb.
And with the rain, this
stony surface becomes
even more slippery. It
is not called ‘The Sacred
Rock’ for nothing.
Before the Parthenon,
before even the Late
Bronze Age citadel that
stood here, before even
its first Neolithic inhab-
itants, this was geology,
this was just a rocky
outcrop. Not that it was
always so barren, devoid
of any soil.
Take a look at any
eighteenth-centur y
engraving and you will
see trees here. And
then look at those
mid-nineteenth-century
photographs taken from
the Philopappou Hill
opposite, and you will
understand: the huge spoil
heaps, pilling up all the
way from the bottom of
the hill to its top, evidence
of the extensive clearing
of the site. We had to get
to the bottom. We had to
remove all post-classical
layers, cleanse the sacred
locale of all remnants of
post-classical ‘barbarity’
(Hamilakis 2007).
I told you to wear better
shoes. It would be bet-
ter to take them off: a
history of the Acropolis
according to our bare
feet (Ingold 2004).

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 The other Acropolises 761

Where are you going?

Our tourist guide does
not say that we should
take a diversion! Instead
of continuing our ascend
towards the centre of the
hill and the Parthenon,
you are taking a left turn;
and now going down a
few steps.
Why would you want to
do this?
Just to admire the lush-
ness of the Ancient
Agora, complete with its
palm trees?
Or the churches, and
the nineteenth-century
buildings that survive the
immense archaeological
cleansing of the site by
the American School of
Classical Studies in the
1930s (Hamilakis 2013)?
Whatever, you came here
for, you did not expect
to see amongst the rub-
ble and the broken
marble fragments, the
headstones of Muslim
graves, did you?

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 762 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

But then again, you

did not
expect to see this either:
A bronze cannon, lying
abandoned just inside
the protective rope, not
far from the foot of the
Parthenon.
Stare into the dark tunnel
of history and count the
casualties.
Recall Benjamin, again
(from memory): every
document of civilization
is at the same time a doc-
ument of barbarity.

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 The other Acropolises 763

Or this:
next to the classical Temple
of the Erechtheion, a clas-
sical architectural marble
block but with an inscrip-
tion in Arabic, struggling
against gravel to remain
visible, above ground.
It was in 1805 when the
fragment was inscribed
with a text praising the
Ottoman governor of
Athens, and then placed
above a prominent
entrance to the fortified
citadel, overlooking the
small town of Athens.
Photographs, Roland
Barthes (1993 [1980]: 96
and passim) contends,
embody two times simulta-
neously, the ‘that-has-been’
of when the photograph
was taken, and the
‘here-and-now’ of its view-
ing. But what happens
when a photographic object
captures another mate-
rial object which is itself
multi-temporal? An object
which embodies not only
the time of its first creation,
but also subsequent times,
when the very same object,
because of its temporal
depth, its aesthetic-sensorial
appeal, and its agency qual-
ities, was invested with new
meaning and mnemonic
weight? The Acropolis is full
of multi-temporal objects
that defy the mono-chrony
of the classical and resist
its colonising effects. Their
photographic materialisa-
tion adds further to their
multi-temporal charac-
ter, and their mnemonic
impact.

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 764 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

‘the most ‘classic’

angle
of photographing the
monument’, says the
archaeologist Yannis
Stavridopoulos.
‘That’s me, in the mid-
1980s; I am photographed
wearing Kitt’s jacket’, he
notes, referring to the
1980s American teenage
TV hero, Knight Rider.
‘I should mention that on
the chest there were small
red lights; unfortunately,
at the photo you cannot
see them blinking.’

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 The other Acropolises 765

Why is there such an

impulse, such a burning
desire to leave your trace
here?
To carve your presence,
to make your mark?
Ignore the ‘do not touch’
signs.
It is through your touch
that you can read the
scars upon the skin of the
marble.

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 766 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

Human emotions
and ancient civic and
political statements,
alongside the modern
archaeological grid.
Desires of permanence
and duration, and desires
of classification, contain-
ment and control.

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 The other Acropolises 767

And the impulse to

commemorate.
‘In the night of the
30th of May 1941, the
patriots Manolis Glezos
and Apostolos Sandas
removed the flag of the
Nazi conquerors from
the Sacred Rock of the
Acropolis. (Installed by
the “United National
Resistance 1941–44” in
1982).’

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 768 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

Talking of sacred-
ness,
why is this fountain
here?
Should it not be at the
entrance of the site?
And it looks too modern
to have stood outside
the small mosque which
was once erected inside
the Parthenon, when
the Acropolis was an
Ottoman citadel.
The ‘unearthing’ of the
optical unconscious,
Walter Benjamin claims
(2008b: 276–88), is a key
function of photography.
By that he means the cap-
turing of contingency, of
the instant, which goes
unnoticed in daily encoun-
ters, a moment which can
then be revealed by the
intense engagement with
the photograph. In taking
his insight further, it can
be claimed that the photo-
graph, as a technique for
the management of atten-
tion (Crary 1992: 18),
enables a sustained and
in-depth engagement with
the micro-locales of the
world that go unnoticed
in daily routines. Such
reflection can also lead to
unexpected connections
and associations.

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 The other Acropolises 769

Sacredness comes in
various guises.
The Christian Acropolis
(Kaldellis 2009) is
another materiality that
refuses to be erased by the
forces of archaeology.

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 770 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

Time to go.
This one we did not see
on our way up. Shiny,
new inscribed marble
upon older, rusty and
wrinkly ones.
This one, installed in 2011
by none other than than
the Queen of Spain, is
perhaps the most recent
layer pilled on the top of
this multi-layered land-
scape: the government of
Spain commemorating
the medieval—
fourteenth-centur y—
Catalan and Aragonian
presence on the Acropolis.
A landscape of commem-
oration, a landscape con-
tinually in the making.

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 The other Acropolises 771

We hadn’t noticed
this either,
it is not that prominently
sign-posted, anyway.
Does the Acropolis
need the seal of recogni-
tion from the UNESCO
World Heritage scheme?
After all, is it not the
Parthenon itself that
adorns UNESCO’s logo?
Yet its world is rather
exclusive and limited, for
it chooses to celebrate
the classical alone, and
mostly that second-half
of the 5th century bc, as
if the Acropolis ceased to
be important after that.

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 772 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

I told you
there was not much to
see here, but you still
wanted to take a stroll
around the hill.
Another small cement
plinth, as inconspicuous
as the one before. But
this time, it sign-posts an
absence. An empty space
in front of it; three lines,
in Greek, in Turkish,
and a clandestine one, in
Greek again.
Before it was demolished,
the Little Mosque, now
an evocative mnemonic
void; but according to
the ones who added the
third line, here stood
Aphrodite’s Temple.
And someone else, or
perhaps the same per-
son, had tried to erase
the Greek word for
mosque. But if you
look carefully, there is
another, smaller graffito,
next to the Turkish line,
in Turkish again: ‘Evet
dogru!’, ‘That’s right!’, it
says, this was indeed the
location of a mosque.
The Acropolis land-
scape is nothing if not
a landscape of con-
testation, a terrain of
silent memories; and
counter-memories.

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 The other Acropolises 773

At last something to
see down here;
and to photograph.
A happy coexistence
of the classical, the
Ottoman, the Christian,
the neo-classical, and the
modern.
Or is it just the photo-
graphic framing of your
multi-cultural fantasies?
Still, the area down here
seems to have been spared
of the cleansing frenzy at
the Acropolis.
Yet everything is behind
metal fences.
Pay for your entry or keep
out: this is an archaeologi-
cal site.

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 774 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

The Acropolis is
everywhere.
Even hanging from the
neck of this woman,
walking passed us on
Areopagitou Street.
Dispersed and mobile
corpo-reality, on the
streets of Athens, in the
galleries of London, in
the global material and
cyber-real ethno-scapes.

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 The other Acropolises 775

The New Acropolis

Museum.
A site of national pride,
a new locale of global
pilgrimage.
A place to see the
Acropolis from, a space
to be seen at. Bodies of
stone, bodies of flesh. A
play of reflections and
shadows, a staged facade
of mirrors, a liquid
hyper-modernity.
Look carefully, and you
will see the nineteenth
century reflected on its
glass surface. Along with
your own face.
No photos allowed.
Cappuccinos are cheap
though.

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 776 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

You are not supposed

to look
this way.
Nothing here to see, save
for the ‘ugly’ modern
apartment blocks.
You must have tried
hard to take this picture,
extending your lens high
up above the screens
which are here to guide
your gaze towards the
smiling archaic Kore, and
towards the Acropolis
hill opposite.
The history that this
museum tells comes into
a standstill sometime
in the Roman period (if
you search thoroughly
enough, you may find
one or two later objects).
Here is another museum
of oblivion (Hamilakis
2011), on par with the
British Museum.
Forgetting colonialism in
Bloomsbury, forgetting
the rich, multi-temporal
and multi-cultural life
of the Acropolis in down
town Athens.

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 The other Acropolises 777

Time for our descend

underground,
let’s take the metro back.
No, these are just copies,
the ‘real’ ones are in the
British Museum; other-
wise, would they let you
sit so close to them?

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 778 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

They are following

us.
And they are watching
us.
Is this what panopticism
means in the twenty-first
century? Is it the moral
authoritative gaze of the
classical from the top of
the tower of Western cul-
ture, or the cameras and
the surveillance screens
of the security company
at the basement of the
metro stations?
And where do the two
meet?

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 The other Acropolises 779

Alas poor Walter,

despite your hopes, tech-
nologies of reproduction
have anything but under-
mined bourgeois culture.
The mimetic machines of
modernity keep enhanc-
ing that unique appari-
tion of a distance. The
power of the Acropolis,
as auratic as ever.
I told you that they are
following us everywhere,
even at home. But at least
here you can write back.

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 780 Yannis Hamilakis and Fotis Ifantidis

Further Reading
This essay is based on the photo-blog, The Other Acropolis (www.theotheracropolis.
com), where more photographic material and other resources can be found; visitors are
also encouraged to leave comments and feedback. On the relationship between the pho-
tographic and the archaeological, see Hamilakis 2001, 2008, 2009; Shanks 1997; Hamilakis
et al. 2009; Bohrer 2011; amongst others. On the recent and contemporary lives of the
Acropolis, in addition to the literature cited above, see Tournikiotis 1994; Hurwit 2000; Caft
antzoglou 2001; Yalouri 2001. On multi-temporality, memory and duration, see Hamilakis
and Labanyi 2008; Olivier, this volume; and of course, Bergson 1991.

Acknowledgements

The image on page 762 is based on a photograph by Yannis Stavridopoulos, reproduced

here with his permission. The photo on page 771 was taken by Yannis Hamilakis. The rest
of the images were produced by Fotis Ifantidis. In addition to the authors, Vasko Démou is
also a member of The Other Acropolis Collective.

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