Children’s Clothing in a Picture: Explorations of Photography, Childhood and Children’s Fashions in Early 20th Century Greece and Its US Diaspora

Abstract

Children’s dress is a constituent element of individual and group identity as well as an indicator of social change. Exploring childhood in three Greek rural communities in Laconia, Kythera, and Crete as well as in their respective diaspora in the United States, this study aims at shedding light on the (re)presentation of children in photographic records through clothing, perceived as the material projection on the self and the group (familial, ethnic, transnational). Drawing from theoretical and methodological approaches of distinct fields, such as history, fashion, photography, material and visual studies, and social anthropology, the study explores dynamic changes and shifting meanings in the way children were perceived and projected or asserted themselves through tangible sources, namely photographs, and clothing. The time period examined spans from the 1900s to the late 1930s without rigidly defining, as shifts witnessed in this time period were occurring in the last years of the 19th century, while the aftermath of the 1930s recession years could be felt beyond the period under study.