The Manaki Brothers Photo Studio
Known as the first Balkan cinematographers, Janaki and Milton Manaki incorporated all their knowledge and selfless love into the recording of a wide range of events and people.
Their predestination, their appearance through “painting with the light” to reach all the similarities in the Balkans and Europe was a rare example of courage, faith and full commitment. The two brothers titanically faced the epic contrasts of life and death that met in this enlightened European point, depicting Sisyphus’ eternal struggle to reach the light in the sky against all the darkness that came as floods with the centuries that suffocated the Balkan cruelly, unjustly and mercilessly.
In Bitola in 1904 they bought a shop on the main street which they immediately started to adapt into a photo studio. It was located on the site of today’s Shirok Sokak 102 building, known as the house where Milton Manaki lived.
The Manaki family originates from the village of Avdela in Grevena, today the Republic of Greece. The older brother – Janaki, finished high school in Bitola and together with his brother Milton in 1904, bought a shop on Shirok Sokak Street, which they immediately began to adapt into a photogahy studio. It was located on the site of today’s building no. 102 Shirok Sokak, known as the house where Milton Manaki lived.
