I was born in Athens, Greece, and have been living in Leeds, England, for many years. I have a first class degree in Sociology from Leeds University. My studies also include Arts and Humanities. My dissertation on Photography & Disability received the Bauman Prize.

I was the president of Leeds University Photosociety from 2005 to 2007. I am a disabled photographer and citizen, conscious from very young about the power of the image and the constructions of social and personal difference.

My dream, when I was a boy, was to become a chess grandmaster. Chess is a small model of life, but with one big difference: its concepts are not contested, truth is truth and chess-mat is just that, no dispute. So, I played chess with all my heart, sleepless nights with chessboards, chess-mates, alcohol and cigarettes... Later I reached the international level of the game, but also worked in so many different jobs and projects (in schools, hotels, police stations, the street, big and small 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 clear: Truth is contested. We see what we know, as we change they, things, change; and all those 'truths' around us are constructed myths... or dreams and many times just 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 of staying alive and creative, holding dreams into a frame before they disappear...If I was to paraphrase William Eggleston, who said that 'he was at war with the obvious', I am at war with the objective symbolism, the image which is based in the supposedly objective representations of reality and which forces a clear-cut reception upon the viewer. I build photographic images which draw from my own memories and contradictory experience. I hope they communicate an emotional and intense, deeper or raw experience, which is not necessarily expressed in words, and is not always clearly defined. 

I have also become active in areas of human rights and disability rights. In 2006 I refused to accept an awarded degree from Leeds University on the grounds of disability discrimination. As a direct result of my actions the University of Leeds has changed a series of long-established discriminatory and heavily bureaucratic policies. It increased its disability funding, expanded its scope and altered the range of provision towards me and future students. If, however, it is now able to deliver to its promises or withdraw back to the rhetoric is debatable and will be seen in due time, the same holds for most institutions around us. Despite what they promise, democratic rights and respect are never granted, never fixed and clear-cut, they are reaffirmed and take a meaning through social and personal struggle. Photography is finally another field for examining the rhetorical transparency of a world of images, related to our impaired reason and the social processes which construct the subjects we identify as real.   

 

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'. Currently I work in self-initiated projects of documentary and art 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 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.