The 30-year long wanderings of the Franco-Swiss philhellene and renowned photographer, Frédéric Boissonnas in our country turned to be particularly fortuitous for Mount Olympus. From the journeys he had taken in Greece, between 1903 and 1935, we have inherited valuable and rare imagery, acknowledged today as part of our mobile heritage. Among other things, Boissonnas had been a fanatical alpinist. In 1913, while in Northern Greece for the creation of a photo album ordered by the Greek government, he decided to ascend Mount Olympus. Together with his friend, Daniel Baud-Bovy, Dean of the Geneva School of Fine Arts, and the local guide, Christos Kakkalos, they became the first to conquer the mountain of Gods, reaching Mytikas, its highest peak. There have been three other visits made by Boissonnas to Olympus, resulting in some of the most amazing shots of the mountain. Through the photographer’s exhibitions, Mount Olympus, as well as Greece, became known all over Europe.
As stated by Marcel Kurtz, Olympus is much more than a mountain: it is an upland area, elsewhere dry and elsewhere heavily forested, elsewhere smooth and elsewhere rough, full of different strands, torn by earth’s age-old turbulence. An entire world of contrast, colors, light and shadow.