The island of Rhodes was fortunate to be photographed like no other. Nature endowed it with unique natural beauties and history blessed it with legends and traditions famous throughout the world.

The purpose of the book is to cover a period of one hundred years, from 1850 when the first photograph was taken there, until 1950, a date that marks the end of centuries of slavery after the events of liberation and integration with Greece.

The difficulties of the effort were twofold. On the one hand, the lack of sufficient sources for the life and work of the photographers of those times, and on the other hand, the abundance of photographs from professional and amateur photographers that had to be identified and dated.

Thus, it was decided to publish the most important photographs of the city and the countryside, most of which come from my personal collection. The rest were drawn from museums and institutions in Greece and abroad, friends, collectors, and relatives of the old local photographers. The intention was to highlight primarily the image, so the photographs were placed in a chronological and thematic sequence, interspersed with small selective texts by travelers and writers of the time.

However, this effort would not be complete without a reference to the photographers, to these unknown heroes to whom all these unique impressions of time are owed. Destined to be behind the camera, the photographer locks time, immobilizes it, and delivers it to us imprinted on photographic paper. Thus, each one of them tells us a story that can later prove to be a valuable source of knowledge of the past. A story that they saw pure as it is illuminated by the sun, and among others, they were the first to see Rhodes of the past century changing and transforming.