In brief...

I grew up in Athens, Greece, then spent a long time in Leeds, UK, and now live in Lancaster. I have a first class degree in Sociology from Leeds University. My other studies include Arts and Humanities. My 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 a 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, art and street photography. I am particularly interested in issues of cultural representations, the formation of self and identity, social divisions and difference, dis-ability and embodiment. I am conscious from very young about the power of the image and the constructions of social, personal and bodily difference.

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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!... Later I reached the international level of the game. But I also worked in so many different jobs and projects (in schools, hotels, and police stations, down in the street, and up in different offices). I travelled around the world, left my home town 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 dreams into a frame before they disappear...dreams which might mean something for someone under a unique and peculiar, subjective perspective.

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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 dominates 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. I build photographic images which draw from my own memories and contradictory experience. I hope that my photographs will - in contrast - communicate an emotional and intense, maybe raw 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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As a socially concerned person, I am also active in areas of human rights and disability rights. In 2006 I refused to accept an awarded Bachelors degree from Leeds University on the grounds of disability discrimination, seeking justice and change within the institution. As a direct result of my actions and my decision to take the university into court,  the University of Leeds responded by changing a series of long-established discriminatory, disabling and heavily bureaucratic policies. It increased its disability funding, expanded its scope and altered the range of 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 carefully the nature of disability support, the way it is administered, the autonomy it allows the student, and the level of existing politics within a department, before commiting to an educational institution.

Photography, by the way, is another field for examining the rhetorical transparency of our world. Images  are related to an impaired reason and a series of social processes and conflicts, which construct those subjects we identify as 'real'.

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I use both film and digital photographic processes. My main tool of work has been the Olympus OM-System. Sometimes I employ Canon EOS cameras and lenses or other much older ones, depending on the context. Please contact me, to discuss any ideas and thoughts, through email at: christos.stavrou@gmail.com or call me at +44(0)7811039130.