Is he or is he not? That΄s the question...

Photo 1. (Sealabs photo)

Eίναι, για δεν είναι ο Παπαϊωάννου;
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Ι΄m continuously hoping that my blogs, especially Thorax and mind, are visited even by people who are not interested of the thorax songs (this is the new name I'm going to use from now on, instead of the word rebetiko which I've already started to dislike - see Thorax and mind, 2009-01-08, Μήνυμά της το βράδυ της ίδιας μέρας (Μessage from Marika Kanaropoulou, the night of the same day).

The question which this article examines is, if the man viewed on photo 1 (third on the right in the front line, holding a bouzouki and with a cigarette in his mouth) is the famous composer Yiannis Papaioannou or not.

There has already started a short discussion in http://groups.google.com/group/Rebetika?hl=en where at least two people believe that he is. I'm claiming he is not. Nobody is unmistakable but I'm sure up to 95% and I will try to prove it.

I will use the letter P as a mark for Papaioannou and the mark X-man for the person we wonder about.

At first, we should try to find approximately the date the photo was taken. We can use the photo 2, from Elias Petropoulos archives. The photo is dated 1937 (?).
The tall standing man under the number 1 is P. Next to him and under the number 2 we can see the famous singer Stratos Payioumitzis. I think that he looks a bit older than in photo nr 1. Both he and Papaioannou too. If I΄m right then the photo 1 is earlier than this, perhaps even earlier than 1935 when P. did his militarty service

Photo 2

The next observation is the obvious difference between P's. and Stratos's heigth. P. was something like 1.90 cm. If you go back to photo 1 you see that the two men have crouched down and look to have, more or less, the same heigth. To tell the truth the X-man seems to be taller and the front part of the photo is dark so that we can't see the way he crouched down.

Before we go closer to the face of X-man we have to observe that the photo 1 is taken from a low angle and that can mislead us concerning different proportions.

THE FACE OF X-MAN

P. has always been very thin and tall with an oblong face. Faces can change but the proportions do not. If this man is P. then he was perhaps a bit fater at that time. Despite that and despite the low angle, I don't think that this man has an oblong face shape.

Observe the forhead. P's, as you can see in photo 4 was higher than X-man's, but there is a reservation. P. has always (?)combed his hair backwards. There is no other photo where we can see that he parted of his hair in the middle, like an open book, as it was trendy during the '30's. But perhaps he did it for a short time or just that day for fun. If it is so, it is not strange that his forehead looks shorter. This way of combing hair covers a part of the forehead. Perhaps P. did not like during a certain period of his youth his high forehead...

On P's face there was another one remarkable point. The distance between his low lip and the end of his chin was almost exremely big (look at photo 4). I don't see something like that on X-man's face, though I guess that his chin look similar to P's. I don't even think that they have quite similar eyebrows. Observe the Χ-man's right eye. His pupil seem to be rather "unbalanced" and moved to the right, something that P. did not have.

Finally, one more rather instinctive "evidence". The aura from the Χ-man's face does not look with the one that P. has in all his photos. The Χ-man gives, in my opinion,the impression of a superficial and ironic character who prefers to take life from the easy way... Papaioannou was an openhearted joker but not in this way...

Photo 3

Photo 4

But, I have to accept that they look each other. On the two following photos (photo 5 from 1938 and photo 6 from 1937 (;), we can observe real similarities between P. and the X-man

Photo 5

Photo 6

We never know...