He is a photographer who has always been persecuted because of his ideology in the difficult years that followed the Greek civil war, so it is almost impossible for him to do his job properly.
Nonetheless, Stelios Kasimatis always managed to take pictures of the weaker classes of the population (laborers, peasants, women, children), to record the difficult conditions of work, living, education and health and, in indeed, always with such quality that stood out from the current view in photojournalism.
Stelios Kasimatis was born in 1920 in Piraeus and graduated from the department of engineers in the school “Association of Piraeus”.
During the occupation of Greece by the Germans and the Italians he infiltrated into the National Liberation Front and the National Resistance Movement putting up stiff resistance to the enemies. He was exiled to the island Ikaria where he was firstly occupied with photography. He developed films and printed photographs secretly. Later, he set up as a photographer with his own studio in Athens.
He was exploiting light with mastery. With a ROLLEIFLEX camera, he wandered for a long period and took shoots of people and their struggles for freedom and survival. He used to photograph kids and in the summertime he took photos of bathers at the beaches of Athens. He photographed Melina Merkouri, Josephine Baker and many others.
He was also a keen philatelist and wrote many articles and studies for “Hellenic Philoteleia”.
