On Saturday, 9 May 2026, the exhibition “The Outward Gaze. The photographs of Joan Leigh Fermor” opens at the GCA / Historical Archive – Museum of Hydra. It is based on the photographic album of the same title and constitutes a comprehensive overview of the photographic work of Joan Leigh Fermor, the beloved companion of the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor.
The exhibition features images of Greece, where she and her husband found refuge for decades, as well as from their numerous travels across Europe and Asia. With her camera always in her luggage, she captured the distinctiveness of landscapes and their inhabitants. These are images that reflect the purity of her spirit, her love for people, her admiration for the grandeur of nature, and the history of the places she visited. Her perspective was neither influenced nor subjected to criticism and thus remained unadulterated in its full breadth.
The photographic work of Joan Leigh Fermor, held at the National Library of Scotland, was curated by Xavier Francesco Salomon, art historian and Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, while its presentation was designed by Olivia Stewart in collaboration with architect, Natalia Boura.
As noted by the curator of the exhibition Xavier Francesco Salomon:
This is a selection of photographs – from the roughly 5,000 prints, transparencies and contact sheets now in the National Library of Scotland – taken by Joan Leigh Fermor (1912–2003) in the 1940s and 1950s. Over two decades, she captured stunning images while travelling in North Africa, in the Middle East, in the Caribbean, in Italy, France and Spain and, above all, across Greece. In the 1950s, together with her husband Patrick Leigh Fermor, she would often be based in Hydra, part of a close circle of friends that included the artists Nikos Ghika and John Craxton. Constantly self-effacing, Joan photographed the world around her, at times for commissions for the Architectural Review and Horizon and for her husband’s two iconic books on Greece: Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966), but most often just for her own fulfilment.
Cyril Connolly remembered Joan with “her dark green cardigan and grey trousers, her camera slung over her shoulder and her golden hair bobbing as she walks, always a little fairer than you think, like the wind in a stubble-field”. Accompanied by her Rolleiflex camera, she captured extraordinary sites – many of them much transformed today – but also ways of living that seem remote from today’s confused world.
Locations and dates of these photographs, however, are not essential and it has been decided not to include them in this exhibition. It is Joan’s eye that speaks alone, with a voice at once lyrical, quiet and elegant. Each image is carefully framed, focusing on distinct forms and textures. Like a gifted writer or a musician, she created beautiful compositions by observing instants and incidents around her. Her unwavering outward gaze turned what she witnessed into utter poetry.
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication The Outward Gaze. The photographs of Joan Leigh Fermor edited by Olivia Stewart. The well-designed album published in 2024 by Class Professional Publishing with the support of the PJLF ARTS FUND, studies the entire photographic work of the British artist and is a tribute to an passionate amateur of the medium who loved the world, its people and photography.
Exhibition duration: 9 May – 26 July 2026
PHOTO CREDITS
Joan Leigh Fermor ©Joan Leigh Fermor EstateThe National Library of Scotland
