Enjoy these beautiful, rare images of 1920s Greece in color, captured from the camera of Maynard Owen Williams.
Williams was a National Geographic correspondent from 1919 and for most of the 1920s. He was an avid traveller who began visiting foreign countries in his teens, exploring Asia and even witnessing the Russian Revolution, among other adventures.
Williams was National Geographic’s first foreign correspondent and his reports include a description of the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1923.
Although Williams pioneered travel photography, he wrote numerous foreign dispatches for the magazine, including a 1949 report from post-Civil War Greece where he returned nearly two decades after his early trip, only to find a different nation than the one he first visited in 1919.
The Maynard Owen Williams Prize for creative nonfiction at Kalamazoo College is named in his memory.
Young woman sitting in a garden of flowers, Corfu.
Women filter water taken from riverside pools to use for drinking, near Yugoslavian frontier.
Women and girls in the garden of a country home, Deka, Corfu.
Two women with baskets used for gathering olives during harvest, Deka, Corfu.
Turkish refugees dry corn near site of Pella in the Macedonian plain.
Three women sit and do needlework, Crete.
Three women pose with children on stone steps, Corfu.
Prior and his monk stand next to well at Europulus monastery, Corfu.
Peasant women, Delphic Festival.
Girls stand on a stairway of a house in a Greek fishing village, Benizze, Corfu.
Artist from Mt. Athos stands next to painting of Saint Nicholas.
Actress in peasant dress from Thessaly.
A woman works outside her home in Crete.
A woman poses in the national costume of Crete.
A woman poses in the national costume of Crete.
A woman in traditional Greek dress knits sitting outside her home, Aivali.
A peddler with his wares passes through the village, Gastouri, Corfu.
A muleteer stands in the woods in Crete.
A man poses in the national costume of Crete.
A man in national costume smokes a waterpipe, Crete.
A maid of Candia poses in costume.
A hunter lies under an olive tree on the island of Crete.
A girl husks corn in a field on the Salonika Kozani Road, Microghouzi.
