STEVE J. DRAKOS  | | |  PHOTOGRAPHY

Dionysian class visions since A.D.1988

Professional photographer since over thirty years, Steve J. Drakos creates avant-garde visions through the emotional tension of the image, daring experimentations and angles balanced by elegance, stylistic research, light control, mastery of color techniques in postproduction and finally precise printing choices.

After living in continuous movement between several European cities, working on commission for many clients worldwide and having his photos published in over fourty countries, he is now based in Prague.
Websites featuring Steve J. Drakos' art photo show exclusive selections of images from the photographer's vast archive, printed in limited, numbered and signed editions on photographic papers and canvas of the highest quality available on the market, for the fine art enthusiasts and the discerning collectors.

"My photography is spiritual art, visceral as the ancient Hellenic theatre. I create supernatural matter through scenes of the European architectural tradition and pieces of its landscape, displays of vital force through the land, the forests and the water, or the fire of human bodies often made more intense by special stylizations. I avoid as much as possible shooting in studio, I rarely use black and white, I prefer real places seen as frames of a situation in progress: I wait the image that the universe must make pass before my eyes, letting the instinct of predators to climb back. For shooting with human subjects, instead, I have always noticed that the relaxed atmosphere during sessions gives poor results, while the tension renders well: I say to those who I portray that they are the actors and actresses in my film, the characters of my book, I deliberately immerse them in an emotional state of interior contrast that they must interpret, I make them sweat and get nervous so that they give real expressions, I actually expose them to heat and cold and I incite them to hate, desire and fear each other, I want them to defy the lens while I am watching them like cats closed against a corner and I grab their reactions. I try to realize visually some forms of my ideas following the attrition during the sets, the power and the audacity of the angle, the choices of printing and the refinement of the color which I consider as a true achievement, the same way the goldsmiths manipulate and chisel precious materials of the Earth in their laboratory.
The collections "Stoneheart", "Total Decor", "Dionysion", "Highlands", are works composed of several dozens of chosen shots, presented in triptychs or individual icons, a small selection of which is visible in this website. My alchemical legacy to the future Fine art prints are available in limited editions on highest quality papers Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl 285 gsm, FineArt Baryta 325 gsm. Pictures sizes: 60x40 cms,120x80 cms. Rigid supports, panels, special frames, different sizes, on commission"

— S. J. Drakos photographer, writer, musician. Bohemia 2025

STEVE J. DRAKOS — GENERAL CONDUCT OF WORK
-the point of Photography,
-the theme of interest of your own set,
-the idea, its components, associations, contrasts,
-the sense and the creation of the set,
-the choice and the use of the location,
-the positioning of lights in relation to the theme of interest,
-entering of the subject in the environment and in the mood,
-angles of shooting, action, provocation, reaction in the photographic work.
Copyright © STEVE J. DRAKOS. All rights reserved. On this page in the next weeks.

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