Μήνυμα ανθρωπιάς ζητά παραλήπτες

This bird above was used by the Greek Tourism Board in the 80´s and 90´s in a campaign for clean beaches. The bird back then said "No garbage, no plastics, in seas and beaches". This graffiti has very successfully used the bird that now says "No fascists, no racists, in cities and neighborhoods". Unfortunately we are still dealing with the old version...

Posted by Life In A City Full Of Errors

O γλάρος που απεικονίζεται παραπάνω χρησιμοποιήθηκε από τον Ελληνικό Οργανισμό Τουρισμού τις δεκαετίες του '80 και του '90 σε μία καμπάνια για καθαρές παραλίες. Τότε ο γλάρος έλεγε «Όχι σκουπίδια, όχι πλαστικά, σε θάλασσες και ακτές». Στο γκράφιτι της παραπάνω φωτογραφίας, ο γλάρος συμβουλεύει «Όχι φασίστες, όχι ρατσιστές, σε πόλεις και γειτονιές». Ένα πολύ εύστοχο μήνυμα που ζητά παραλήπτες, αλλά στην Ελλάδα του 2013, δυσκολεύεται να τους βρει, είναι η αλήθεια...

British Troops Shoot Londonderry Rioters (1971)

Young rioters trying to escape from clouds of CS gas released by the troops in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 8th July 1971.

The picture above was taken by the photographer Don McCullin, who is particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban strife. That was back in 1971 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland when two men killed by the British Army.

Some of the worst violence in the town for three years flared up that afternoon when a crowd of 200 gathered in Lecky Street at the news of an army shooting earlier in the day.

Welder and former boxer Seamus Cusack, 28, died in Letterkenny District Hospital of a gunshot wound. Troops opened fire, initially with rubber bullets and CS gas, but they failed to disperse the crowd. The rioters retaliated by throwing three nail bombs. The army returned fire. One man was shot in the stomach and five soldiers are reported to have been injured by the missiles. The man was dead on arrival at hospital. He was identified as 19-year-old George Desmond Beattie of Donegal Street, Bogside.

There was a lull in the violence after Mr Beattie had been shot and a group of factory girls marched in silence through the area carrying black bags.


This picture was used by Killing Joke for the cover of their debut album in 1980.

Moments of Freedom..

Sunset at Dikella, Alexandroupoli, Greece (2/8/2011)

"3 Days of Freedom" festival at Vergina, Veria, Greece (22-24/7/2011)


Kavourotripes, Chalkidiki, Greece (9/7/2011)

Back to the pure days..

Punks waiting for after-midnight views of "The Return Of The Living Dead" and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" at "Αλφαβίλ" cinema in Exarchia, Athens back in the '80s.

Those years and at a "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" view at the same place, coffin bearers appeared outside the cinema doing a stroll! It was Christmas Eve.

Holiday in Cambodia

The lifeless body of a hanged student outside Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand (1976).

The Massacre of 6 October 1976, was an attack on students and protesters that occurred on the campus of Thammasat University and at Sanam Luang in Bangkok. Students from various universities were demonstrating against the return to Thailand of Field Marshall Thanom Kittikachorn, a former military ruler. By the official count, fourty-six people (maybe hunderds) died and in the attack, during which protesters were shot, beaten and their bodies mutilated. Thousands were arrested.

Associated Press photographer Neal Ulevich covered the Vietnam War for five years. But nothing he saw in the jungle prepared him for the morning of Oct. 6, when right-wing students attack left-wing students near the university. "When I got there, it was getting more and more violent. Paramilitary troops heavily armed with recoilless rifles showed up. The left-wing students were not armed and were not shooting back. They took refuge in the university buildings.

"Tremendous volleys of automatic weapons were fired across the soccer fields into the classrooms. There were bodies all over, glass breaking. There was no place to take cover. I was very scared."

Finally, the left-wing students surrender. Ulevich heads for the gates, anxious to get his pictures back to his office. "I saw some commotion in the trees. I walked down there and I saw a body hanging. He was certainly dead, but the crowd was so enraged that a man was hitting the body on the head with a folding chair. I stood there to see if anybody was looking at me. Nobody was. I took a few frames and walked away." That was when the picture of the post had taken. The photographer won the Pulitzer prize in 1977 for this photograph.

In the end, an irony, as Neal Ulevich says: "When I won the Pulitzer, the Bangkok papers noted it on Page One. They were very proud that a photographer from Bangkok had won the Pulitzer. They didn't show the pictures."


Dead Kennedys use this photo for their second single called "Holiday in Cambodia" that released in May 1980. The title track attacks both Eastern totalitarianism and Western complacency. The song's lyrics offer a satirical view of young, self-righteous Americans (So you been to school/For a year or two/And you know you’ve seen it all/In daddy’s car/Thinkin’ you’ll go far...) and contrast such a lifestyle with a brutal depiction of the Pol Pot regime of Cambodia (Well you’ll work harder/With a gun in your back/For a bowl of rice a day/Slave for soldiers/Till you starve/Then your head is skewered on a stake).

London Calling

Paul Simonon smashing his bass in New York City (1979).

The photographer Pennie Smith took a picture of Paul Simonon smashing his Fender Precision bass against the stage at The Palladium in New York City on 21 September 1979, during the "Clash Take the Fifth" US tour of The Clash.


The photograph went on to be used on the cover of the their "London Calling" album, but the photographer originally did not want the photograph to be used. She thought that it was too out of focus, but Joe Strummer and the graphic designer thought it would make a good album cover. In 2002, Smith's photograph received Q magazine’s "Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Photograph of All-Time" award in 2002, commenting that "it captures the ultimate rock'n'roll moment - total loss of control".


The cover artwork was designed by Ray Lowry and was a homage to the design of Elvis Presley's debut album. The cover named the ninth best album cover of all time by Q magazine in 2001.

The Game is (still) not fair..

Many people died and still dying by famine in Uganda.

Taken in Karamoja district, Uganda in April 1980, by the photographer Mike Wells, the picture above shows the contrasting hands of a starving boy and a missionary spoke louder than any world leader and any news story about the famine in Uganda. Karamoja region has the driest climate in Uganda and was prone to droughts. The 1980 famine in there where 21% of the population (and 60% of the infants) died was one of the worst in history. The worst recorded famine was the great Finn famine (1696), which killed a third of the population.

The photographer, who would later win the World Press Photo Award for this photo, admitted that he was ashamed to take the photo. The same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes with pictures of people starving to death.

Famine, drought and ethnic violence go on until nowdays in Karamoja. The Karamojong are a nomadic people, but since Idi Amin years in the 1970s, their nomadic patterns were curtailed due to the increase of cross border security, internal raids, and influx of weapons which enabled them to lead raids.


In 1982, Dead Kennedys used this photo as a front cover of their "Plastic Surgery Disasters" album.

Bangladesh Atrocities (1971)

During the Bangladesh atrocities from 1971.

The photo above was taken by Don McCullin during Bangladesh atrocities that started with Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971 and continuing throughout the Bangladesh Liberation War. There were widespread violations of human rights in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) perpetrated by the West Pakistan Army with support from local political and religious militias. "Time" magazine reported a high U.S. official as saying "It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland."

Bangladeshi authorities claim that 3 million people were killed. The international media and reference books in English have also published figures which vary greatly from 200,000 to 3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole. A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.

There are many mass graves in Bangladesh, and more are continually being discovered. The first night of war on Bengalis, which is documented in telegrams from the American Consulate in Dhaka to the United States State Department, saw indiscriminate killings of students of Dhaka University and other civilians.

Numerous women were raped, tortured and killed during the war. The exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate with some sources quoting figures as high as 400,000. One of the more horrible revelations concerns 563 young Bengali women, some only 18, who were held captive inside Dhaka's dingy military cantonment since the first days of the fighting. They were seized from Dhaka University and private homes and forced into military brothels, with some of the women carrying war babies being released.


Don McCullin's photo used by Crucifix for the front cover of the "Dehumanization" LP from 1983.

Fire on Marlborough Street

During a Fire Escape Collapse in Boston, U.S.A. (1975)

On July 22, 1975, photograph Stanley J. Forman working for the Boston Herald American newspaper when a police scanner picked up an emergency: “Fire on Marlborough Street!”
Climbed on a fire truck, Forman shot the picture of Diana Bryant (19 years old) and her goddaughter, Tiare Jones (2 years old) when they fell helplessly. Diana Bryant was pronounced dead at the scene. The young girl lived. Despite a heroic effort, the fireman who tried to grab them had been just seconds away from saving the lives of both.

Photo coverage from the tragic event garnered Stanley Forman a Pulitzer Prize. But more important, his work paved the way for Boston and other states to mandate tougher fire safety codes.


The German post-punk band Abwärts use this photo for the cover of their first album "Amok Koma" back in 1980.

Child with Toy Hand Grenade

Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City, U.S.A (1962)

The picture above was taken by the famous photographer Diane Arbus. It shows a boy*, with the left strap of his jumper awkwardly hanging off his shoulder, tensely holding his long, thin arms by his side. Clenched in his right hand is a toy grenade, and his left hand is held in a claw-like gesture; his facial expression is maniacal. Arbus captured this photograph by having the boy stand while moving around him, claiming she was trying to find the right angle. The boy became impatient and told her to "Take the picture already!" His expression conveys his exasperation and impatience with the whole endeavor, as the contact sheet for the shoot reveals. In other pictures, he is seen as a happy child.


The photograph was used, without permission, on the first version of the cover of the debut LP ".. And No One Else Wanted To Play" by Canadian punk band S.N.F.U. in 1984, and had to be replaced with drawing in subsequent editions because of copyright infringement.


The image is also used on the cover of American indie rock band Cloud Cult's debut album "Who Killed Puck?" and on the cover of the sametitled EP from 1984 of the hardcore/punk band from Netherlands called No Pigs.

An original print of the photograph sold for $408,000 in April 2005.

* The boy in the photograph is Colin Wood, son of tennis player Sidney Wood. An interview with Colin, with his recollections about Arbus taking this photograph, is presented in the BBC documentary "The Genius of Photography".

Punks are breaking!

In 1984 the greek newspapers of the time discover the "new enemy within". The Punks.



The occasion were the incidents that took place out of the Α.Σ.Ο.Ε.Ε. (High School of Economics and Commercial Sciences) in the centre of Athens, because the live solidarity concert that was going to take place for the anarchists that were in prison that time, cancelled by members of Κ.Ν.Ε. (Communist Youth of Greece).



The next day the articles of the press essentially heralding the attacks that would follow by the police and the goverment to the Exarchia Square's youth with the famous "virtue operations" (επιχειρήσεις αρετής).


"And now the...Sioux. Exarchia; after the drugs and anarchists, punks came with the shaved heads", the title of a terrorlust article of a newspaper in 14th of September 1984."...with the hair cut like a brush, usually dyed with different colours, scaring the elderly, throwing beer bottles and pissing anywhere".