In brief...

I grew up in Athens, Greece, then spent another half life in Leeds, UK, before moving to Lancaster where I live now. I have a BA degree in Sociology (1st class) from Leeds University and a MA in Sociological Research from Lancaster University. My educational background also combines studies in Photography, Arts, Humanities, Criminology and Social Policy. My BA dissertation on Photography & Disability received the Bauman Prize and will be shortly published.

I currently hold an Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) award from  Lancaster University for doctoral research in the areas of photography, visual sociology and disability studies.

 

My paper ''The dangerous politics of representation: the question of positive disability imagery' was delivered in the 1st International Visual Methods Conference, Leeds 2009.

I have participated in several group exhibitions, including Leeds Art Gallery (2002), and The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds (2006), which was supported by Oxfam's international campaign 'Control Arms'. I was the president of Leeds University Photo-Society from 2005 to 2007.

Currently I work in self-initiated projects of documentary and street photography. I am conscious from very young about the power of the image and the different ways that personal and bodily difference is socially shaped. It is particularly interesting and relevant to me to explore the visual formation of self and identity, related to issues of dis-ability and embodiment; as well as focus on the photographic representation of wider cultural difference and new expressivive photographic ways. For one of my latest street photography projects, see the online photoblog 'Lancaster09'.

 

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In detail...

My dream, when I was a boy, was to become a chess grandmaster. Chess is a miniature model of life, although with one big difference: its concepts are not contested, truth is truth and chess-mat is just that, nothing much to dispute about the end of a game. So, I played chess with all my heart, seeking the truth... sleepless nights with chessboards, clocks, tournaments, chess-mates, books, alcohol and cigarettes... unforgettable victories and more unforgettable defeats!...Eventually I reached the international level of the game. But during my life I also worked in so many different jobs and projects (teaching chess in schools, running a hostel, DJing in bars, selling vinyl records in flea markets, supporting justice and unattended youths in police stations, spending time down at the street, and up in different offices, or even deep in basements). I travelled around the world, left my home city behind and even lived for awhile in Australia. Throughout these years I have tried to view and understand the world from different perspectives.

One thing is now clear: Truth is contested. And our meanings are unstable, ambiguous and contradictory. We, short-lived occupants of this planet, we see what we know. As we change, the things around us change too. And all those 'truths'  - which once appeared simple and self-evident, can be seen by the critical mind as no more than social myths... or could we say, man-made dreams. Sometimes no more than rhetoric nightmares...

 

Photography has become the major area of my focus during the last years. It is a part of the continuing search for meaning and 'truth', as much as a silent way for staying alive and creative; holding personal dreams into a frame before they disappear...dreams which might mean something for someone under a unique and peculiar, subjective perspective.

And yet, photography is also another field where scepticism and critical thought towards, for example, the assumed transparency of our world should find the ground to exist and flourish. Images related to a rather impaired reason and within a series of social processes and silenced conflicts of productiion and signification, construct us as subjects that we then come to identify with as 'real'.

"Perhaps the desire to take photographs arises from the observation that on the broadest view, from the standpoint of reason, the world is a great disappointment." B. Gerry Coulter

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If I was to paraphrase William Eggleston, who said that 'he was at war with the obvious', I am at war with a kind of objective symbolism which seems to dominate current imagery. In other words, the assumption that the photographic image is based upon some kind of objective representation of reality. Most of photography around us, I think that not only operates under these illusionary premises, but also attempts to force a clear-cut reception and perception upon the viewer, often a symbolic superficial message endowed with objectivity. I build photographic images which draw from my own memories and contradictory, layered experience. I hope that my photographs will - in contrast - communicate an emotional and intense, maybe raw visual experience, which is not necessarily expressed in words, and is not clearly defined; thus, materialising their contingent existence in touch with the particular in each individual. 

 

 

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Disability Rights vs University of Leeds

As a socially concerned person, I have tried to remain active in the social struggle for disability rights. In 2006 I refused to accept an awarded Bachelors degree from Leeds University on the grounds of disability discrimination, seeking personal justice and wider change within the institution. As a direct result of my actions and my decision to take the university into court,  the University of Leeds eventually responded by trying to change a series of traditional and heavily bureaucratic policies with discriminatory and disabling effects. At that time (2008), it increased its funding to become more inclusive to students with different needs, expanded the scope and altered the range of educational provision towards me and future students.

Whether, now, these policies have delivered what they promised, an actual and not rhetoric justice and equality, is debatable and will be assessed in due time. But the same holds for most of our prized institutions around us. Despite what it is promised and how things are labelled, democratic rights and respect are never granted, never fixed and clear-cut. They are reaffirmed and take a meaning only through a continuous social and personal struggle.

I recommend to every potential student to examine very carefully the nature of disability support, and  not be satisfied with the existing rhetoric, before deciding to commit to any particular educational institution. By this I mean be ready for a wide variation between apparently similar educational settings; and ask to know the specific ways educational/disability support is administered and organised  - including a meeting with the specific people involved; the autonomy it allows to the student, and if possible the level of existing politics and communication between and within departments.

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Please contact me, to discuss any ideas and thoughts, through email at: christos.stavrou@gmail.com or call me at +44(0)7811039130.