COLLECTION NAME
Gordon Harold Mate collection

CREATOR
Gordon Harold Mate

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION
Gordon Harold Mate was born in Poole, Dorset, a town on the South coast of England. On graduating from the Eastern Telegraph Company’s training school in Cornwall in 1911, he was posted to the island of Syros, a convenient staging post for the transmission of cables from the UK to India, Africa and the Far East. While living and working on the island and learning to speak Greek, he developed an interest in photography, using a plate camera and doing his own developing and printing. These photos, taken between 1912 and 1920, bear witness to his interest in the popular strata of the island, including its peasant, fishing and farming communities. They provide rare visual evidence of material culture from the period, including traditional attire, neoclassical architecture, fishing practices, and wooden boatbuilding. Courtesy of the G.H. Mate Estate