"My mission is to make sure that nobody can say: I didn't know." These words by prominent photojournalist Yannis Behrakis encapsulate both his passion for photojournalism and his journalistic ethics. The same words also epitomize his coverage of global crises and events over a period of thirty years, in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Libya, Greece, Bosnia and Iran. This coverage of events that Behrakis was an eyewitness to are at the center of the exhibition "Eyewitness / Yannis Behrakis", presented at the MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Warehouse A', Pier A', Thessaloniki port area), from 15 June to 08 October 2023 (exhibition opening: Thursday 15 June 2023 / 19:30).
As a war correspondent with the Reuters news agency, Yannis Behrakis witnessed some of the most turbulent and historical moments of our time, received the most prestigious international awards for his work and inspired a younger generation of Greek photojournalists. The exhibition at the MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography presents Behrakis’ pictures first shown in the exhibition honouring his work that took place at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center as part of the 2019 edition of the Athens Photo World, accompanied by screenings, early material, magazines and equipment from the photojournalist’s personal archive, with kind permission from his family.
A map depicting all the wars and crisis zones Behrakis covered, equipment illustrating the evolution of photography from the analog to the digital era, videos with interviews and presentations featuring Behrakis himself, texts that provide new readings of his photographs, are all presented in an endeavour to capture and express a recurrent feature of his work: his simplicity of composition, his expressive immediacy, his choice of the decisive moment, his respect towards the integrity of the event.
Curated by
Iro Katsaridou, director of MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Hercules Papaioannou, curator at MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography Lefteris Pitarakis, photojournalist / Associated Press
The exact dates of the guided tours and parallel activities will be announced shortly.
The exhibition is taking place in collaboration with the Athens Photo World.
CV
Yannis Behrakis was born in Athens, Greece in 1960. He studied photography at the Athens School of Arts and Technology and received his BA (Hons) in photography from the Middlesex University. A Reuters photojournalist since 1987, he reported on some of the most important global stories of the last three decades.
Among several national and international awards, Yannis Behrakis has been named three times European Photojournalist of the Year by Fuji (1999, 2002, 2004). In 2000 he received the John Faber award from the Overseas Press Club of America in New York and the same year he was awarded with the most prestigious Greek journalistic prize, the Botsis Foundation Award by the President of Greek Republic. In 2000 Behrakis won the first prize in the General News Stories category by the World Press Photo and in 2002 and 2016 the Bayeux Awards for war correspondents. In 2011 he was awarded by the NPPA (National Press Photographers Association) an award of excellence in the General News Stories category in the Best of Photojournalism competition. In 2012 and 2015 he won awards in the prestigious POYi (Pictures of the Year International) by the Missouri University. In 2015 he was named Guardian and Reuters Photojournalist of the Year and won the gold award in Days Japan International Photojournalism Awards.
Behrakis played a leading role in the Reuters team that won the Pulitzer prize for breaking news photography for the coverage of the refugee crisis in 2015. A mentor and teacher of photojournalism, he was a regular lecturer in the Media school of Indiana University. In 2017 he was appointed by Reuters as the Ambassador of Reuters photo department and a Senior Editor-Special Projects. Yannis Behrakis passed away in March 2019 in Athens, Greece