konstantakou's photostream

My name is Lena Konstantakou. I take pictures. Pictures, I hope, that can at times tell a story on their own. Or at least they can lift and add meaning to the accompanying words.
Photography to me is a powerful communicator, maybe the most powerful communicator. It is a visual language.
It can express the comic, the tragic, the triumphant, the pitiful, the good and the evil. I believe beauty exists in everything, even in suffering.
I try to express the emotions of all of these things through my pictures. And I hope to get it right most of the time.
If I can, I end my visual stories with a positive message.
Most of my subjects are chosen because of my own need for self-expression.
But through my work I also aim to communicate to the viewer an experience of pleasure, meaning and satisfaction.
I come from Greece, currently living in Athens. For the last 16 years I have been living in the UK where I studied and worked. I graduated from Southampton Institute and Kent Institute of Art and Design with a BA Honours in Graphic Design.
For the last eight years, a staff job as an Art Editor on The Daily Telegraph in London gave me security.
Security is nice, but it is not fulfilment. Photography provides my fulfilment.
I have been working as a freelance photographer for the last 15 years and my work has been published in Greece and the UK.
In October 2010, I had my first photographic exhibition in London, at Idea Generation Gallery, with black and white images from Cuba with the title ‘Cuba is Alive’. I then took a deep breath and left The Daily Telegraph, and moved with my camera back to Greece.
My love of travel and talking to people inspires my photography. I have also had a lifelong love of dance and music and my photographs are often connected with movement and physicality.
I get my motivation from being curious and active. Maybe my images are mostly appealing to dreamers. And I hope that is all of us.

Awards: Finalist, The Professional photographer of the year awards 2010