COLUMBIA, SC.- Columbia, SC - Columbia City Councilman Daniel Rickenmann presented South Carolina native Constantine Manos the key to the city, Friday, September 19 prior to his lecture on A Greek Portfolio at the Columbia Museum of Art. This will be the first time Manos has visited Columbia in nearly 20 years and his visit coincides with Columbia's 22nd Annual Greek Festival.

A Greek Portfolio represents an impromptu pictorial account of Manos' travels through rural Greece and the Greek islands in the 1960s. In frame after frame he reveals with warmth, feeling and understanding a way of life that had remained virtually unchanged for centuries but was destined for extinction as the youth of these small country villages and secluded farms left for the opportunities in the city. The exhibition will be on view through January 11, 2009.

Manos was born in Columbia to Greek immigrant parents and began his photographic career when he was 13 years old. He worked as a photographer for The State newspaper while studying at the University of South Carolina and continued his photography after graduating. Manos' photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and other international museums.

The Columbia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago are the only two museums in the country that have a set of photos from A Greek Portfolio. Manos donated 50 images from the portfolio to the Museum. "My loyalty with the Museum goes way back to Jack Craft and the Taylor House on Senate Street," Manos said. He makes his own prints and made extra ones for the purpose of giving them to the Museum. The vintage prints, created close to the time of their initial making, were made at the time of the publication of his first book, A Greek Portfolio, in 1972.

"It is an honor to have Constantine Manos, an artist represented in our collection, give a public lecture at the Museum, as it helps bring our art collection 'alive' to the public," executive director Karen Brosius said.