Photography exhibitions tell the story of Cyprus

Sooner or later, the streets of your youth – so lively and lush and cool – sit still on a gallery wall. Former haunts seem dozy and distant in their polite frames, but this is a matter of time.

Such is the effect of historical photographs, as felt in Nicosia this summer through two temporary exhibits, Three Photographic Trails – Nicosia: People and Places at the Leventis Municipal Museum, and 50 Years – Turkish Invasion and Occupation at the Nicosia Town Hall.

Initiated with scholarly care by director Tzeni Savvidou, the Leventis exhibit is the second part of a trilogy, which intends to “illustrate the capital of Cyprus through the passage of time.” This summer’s instalment, which can be seen on the museum’s third floor until August 25, covers the 1950s and early 1960s.

There is something modish and ephemeral about this time period in Nicosia, and the gallery space follows suit. The walls are not walls but planks: a wooden labyrinth that snakes through a big white room. Men and women of the 20th century are there in strength, with their beehives and gelled moustaches, around meeting tables or fruit stands, with a glamour or a homeliness that in either case effects nostalgia. Postcards, prints, drawings and old footage from the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation all present a changing Nicosia. The last years of British rule – and the first years without it – are given a workout in doting detail.

The photos belong to the past in more ways than one; for their old-fashioned air, yes, but also for their clean splinter from the present. On the top floor of the museum, the buzz of the streets is quiet. There is no real sign of the Nicosia that will come – not in the material, certainly, nor in the experience of walking through the gallery hall.

But there are traces. Take, for example, a blown-up postcard – a drawing of a lush, Mediterranean building, the Ledra Palace Hotel in all the saturated and sunny glory of the 1950s. It is a simple and unassuming photo. Yet looking at the postcard, which seems to recall a rosy, halcyon social era, it is hard not to think of the next 60 years, or about the structure as it stands now. Gone are the gardens. Gone is the dancing, the music, the band.

In other words, this photograph – and hundreds of others in the exhibit – are notable not for their rarity, then, but for the contrast between the life once lived and the static images that now represent it. Matters of history are set out clearly and briefly, but the exhibition is also and throughout its full length a commingling of bitterness and nostalgia and memory.

A few blocks away, at the Nicosia Town Hall, cooler heads prevail. Organised by the Press and Information Office, the exhibit 50 Years – Turkish Invasion and Occupation draws from its “extensive photographic archive” to record “the atrocities of war, human suffering and the yearning for reunification.” Visitors can see these archival products of 1974 on weekends until August 3.

Virtually every photograph is black-and-white. This is a demanding exhibition, nothing sunny or saturated about it. First, in a sort of lobby, a set of free-standing signs recount the timeline of the invasion. The main room is a modern, airy space coated wall-to-wall with large photographs, grouped by different aspects of the conflict: “Refugees,” “Missing People,” “Women,” for instance. The photos are bleak. Soldiers fall, children cry, buildings crumble. Here and there, the gallery slips into an explanatory phrase, a protesting word. But for the most part, visitors are left to encounter the imagery alone.

One of the more jolting parts of this exhibit, then, is its grim simplicity. It is hard to fake archival photography and its innate rusticness turns out often to be an advantage. In the 108-page catalogue everything on view is set against white pages, a nameless historical voice adds the occasional annotation. The photos risk neither doziness nor rosiness. Here, historical photography makes a point; here, the sad tug of time is politicised, ready to strike.

While the Leventis seems to invite memory, this exhibit does fine without it. Both draw on photography’s ability to present the passing moments, which are otherwise difficult to present as exhibition material. For that reason, we leave with an appreciation for the photographers, known and unknown, who have been catching that passing moment for 50 years and more. We also leave with a sense of what’s changed.

Change makes, in some ways, an odd pairing with the static taunt of old photographs. Witnessing change through photography – not to mention joy and tumult and loss – is an eerie and daunting task. Perhaps an older audience comes intent, informed and not seldom nostalgic, ready for the long haul of memory.

But the rest of us are left to make out through pure visuals. The lean and the grand. To see the way it was, and then to fill in the blanks. All this is a matter of time.

Three Photographic Trails – Nicosia: People and Places

Part two of a trilogy exhibition with photographs of Nicosia from 1950-60. Until August 25. Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia, Nicosia. Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-4.30pm. www.leventismuseum.org.cy

50 years – Turkish Invasion and Occupation

Photographic exhibition that visually recounts the devastation of 1974. Until August 3. Old Town Hall of Nicosia. Tuesday-Thursday, 5pm-8pm. Weekends, 10am-1pm. www.pio.gov.cy