April 2025: Anastasia Pantsios

Anastasia Pantsios "Cat on Porch, Arthur Avenue" Digital Photography

Anastasia Pantsios established her career as a music photographer in the 1980s shooting artists such as David Bowie, Kiss, The Who, U2, Stevie Nicks and Bruce Springsteen. Her work appeared in books, album covers, TV shows, ads, tour programs and publications such as Rolling Stone, Spin, The NY Times and the Village Voice. She has been in nearly four dozen exhibitions, including Girls to the Front: 40 Years of Women in Rock at the Rock Hall. Her work is the definitive photo archive of the Northeast Ohio music scene from the 1970s on, encompassing local acts and events, and international touring acts who performed in the area. She was photographer for the Cleveland Opera from 1987-1995, shot professional wrestling shows across the country for national wrestling publications and promotions from 1985-1992, and has documented the Cleveland burlesque scene since 2011. She did food, news and concert photography for Scene and the Free Times from 2003-2012. She’s currently editor of CoolCleveland.com where she produces photostreams of events around northeast Ohio. Her personal work focuses on visually defining the urban landscape through strategic street photography projects including a two-year study of the impact of the Opportunity Corridor boulevard, intended as a transportation convenience for suburbanites, on its surrounding neighborhood.

---

Artist Statement

As a Chicagoan growing up in an era of radical change to the built environment, I was influenced by photographer Richard Nickel who used his camera to advocate for preservation of the city’s architectural legacy, as well as photojournalists such as Wayne Miller who looked at the homely south side neighborhoods (where I grew up) that were overshadowed by the glut of fabulous new skyscrapers erupting all over downtown. I’m drawn to stories about how cities grow, decay and change, and what that means for the people living there. Street photography has been my primary focus for the past 20 years, and while it might seem like a dramatic break from shooting performers, I see my current work as documenting the theater of the street. Much of my work looks at how certain elements of the city change with time, weather and season, and the disappearance of landmarks and their replacement with something new — or with nothing. The Opportunity Corridor project gave me the chance to use the landscape as a metaphor for the lives of the people there and hint at the broader impact of changes occurring in the area, while looking at the promises made in part to cover up the root motivation for building the road: the convenience of white suburbanites over the poor, black residents. I’ve explored abandoned churches, decaying homes, empty lots and piles of debris, as well as small businesses, demolition and construction, to paint a picture of a changing area — and who it’s changing to benefit

Tell us a bit about your background. How did you come to embrace the life of a visual artist? Was there a pivotal moment or influence that sparked your journey into art?
My major in college (and grad school) was scene designer and technical theater. I hoped to be a lighting designer, but that profession wasn't open to me as a woman at the time. I had already begun taking photos for the theater, fueled by my father's interest in photography s a serious amateur photographer, and started submitting them to the school paper. The paper got tickets to the big concerts at the time so I began taking photos of musicians as well.

Every artist draws inspiration from somewhere. Can you share a little about the influences, artists, or experiences that have shaped your creative vision? Are there particular themes or stories that resonate with you deeply and appear frequently in your work?
I found I had a knack for recording events happening both onstage and out in the world, and as a result of my theater work, interpreting visually what people were presenting. The music scene of the 70s and 80s was especially fertile as music was becoming more visual and theatrical, and artists used lights, sets and costuming to amplify the ideas in their music. I later photographed professional wrestlers and burlesque and drag performers and found the same kind of confluence between performance and visual presentation. I find the most inspiration from street photographers who record life as it happen, especially artists such as Brassai, Weegee, Ruth Orkin, Gordon Parks, Robert Frank, Herman Leonard, and Andre Kertesz. But I also derive inspiration from photographers whose work is very different from mine such as Richard Mishrach (my favorite photographer) and Gregory Crewdson, whose very different approach gives me new ways of thinking about interpreting the world.

​Walk us through your creative process. How do you approach a new piece, from the moment an idea forms to the final detail? Do you follow a routine, or does each project develop differently?
My projects evolve from the environment around me. Initially music photography captured my interest because of my involvement in the music scene; later on my intersection with other theatrical entities (pro wrestling, burlesque) did the same. In the last 20 years, I've developed numerous projects about the urban environment I grew up in as a Chicago native and now resident of Cleveland, much of it emanating from my stint as a news reporter, where I found myself asking questions about why things were happening as they did and what it meant to that environment and the people there. Once I start on a subject, it seldom leaves my plate although things ebb and flow!

Artistic journeys often come with both challenges and triumphs. Can you share any memorable challenges you’ve encountered in your career, and perhaps a breakthrough moment that shifted your perspective or approach to your work?
Music photography began presenting challenges by the late 80s with restrictions that prohibited making meaningful images in many cases, and I began to transition out of it, looking for situations where I had more freedom. One of my breakthrough moments was my switch to digital photography in 2004 when I escaped the limitations of film as far as exploring stories and environments and I was able to start executing non-music stories I'd had in the back of my mind but could've afford to do. Now I can explore a story in depth, no matter how much time or "film" it takes.'

Your work has a unique style and presence. How would you describe it to someone encountering it for the first time? Are there particular materials, colors, or techniques you find yourself returning to?
My main technique is observation. I want to tell a story with my photos about what is going on at a particular time and place. I'm not a technical person and always found obsession with equipment to be an obstacle to observation, something I saw over and over in my music days when it seemed like the guy (and it was always a guy) with the most equipment missed the great photos — too busy playing with lenses! I want people to be able to feel an emotion from a shot, whether it's of a person or a scene.

As an artist working in today’s rapidly changing world, how do current events, social themes, or new technologies impact your work? Have you felt compelled to address certain issues or explore new media in response?
As I said above, my switch to digital photography expanded the range of my work, allowing me to explore and experiment without worrying about cost. Social themes are a major driver of my current work. My series of the past two years is called "Looking for the Opportunity," which digs into the impact of the so-called "Opportunity Corridor," originally called the "University Circle Access Boulevard" and intended to speed west and south suburbanites to University Circle and the Cleveland Clinic through an impoverished neighborhood called the Forgotten Triangle more easily. I wanted to see how the early promises of great "opportunity" for the neighborhood were playing out in reality and what the immediate surrounding neighborhood looked like one or two blocks off the corridor. Growing up on Chicago's South Side, I've always had a strong awareness of inequity and the promises made by developments and civic leaders to address it that don't always (or usually) have the impacts they promise. The project sprang from the news reporting I did around Cleveland development projects and how and why they happened — and whether they fulfilled their promises. (I predicted the demise of the so-called Medical Mart before they even broke ground!)
What's next for you as an artist? Are there upcoming projects, exhibitions, or dreams you’re particularly excited about? And how do you envision your work evolving over the next few years?
In the immediate future, I'm doing a major retrospective of my music work at BAYarts in Bay Village opening on Saturday April 19 with a reception from 6-9pm and running through June 13. It will feature some of the superstar shots from the peak of my career shooting national artists as well as images of women musicians active in Cleveland's music scene today. I'll also be doing a Cleveland Stories talk at the Music Box Supper club on April 30, with two other photographer friends of mine, Jim Lanza and Karen Novak, who both have shows in April. In the longer run, I'm planning to organize and present my "Looking for the Opportunity" project, hopefully by the end of 2025 or early 2026, and I'd be interested in traveling the show and talking about it to various audiences to start conversations about the differing impacts of such projects on different people. I will be continuing my exploration of the city as I've done over the years, with a particular interest in how things change, what things that disappear from the cityscape and whether they are replaced and with what — and what that means to those who live there.