About Speaker
Elena Paraskeva is a Cypriot-born photographer who lived and worked in the U.S for over a decade mainly as a marketing executive for international conglomerate Nestle, managing the marketing for their international Water Division for North and South America. Upon returning to her country of origin, she embarked into the world of photography as a means of self-discovery and healing after an illness left her home-confined for the better part of two years. The initial curiosity became an obsession, and the random attempts at capturing beauty by photographing a mix of genres and styles quickly became a honed effort to sculpt a strong visual identity via conceptual portraiture and story-telling with highly-stylized and often surrealistic elements. Although a big part of her work is now commissioned, she loves creating series with an implicit social message that allow her to use her imagination to conceive scenarios and design scenes that capture the essence of contemporary life. She has done commercial, fashion and fine-art work for clients across the globe, from the U.S to Australia to the UK, and has been featured in a multitude of photography magazines such as PDN, Photography Masterclass, Dodho, Digital Camera, Digital Photographer, N-Photo, Digitalis Foto Magazin, Good Light etc Her work has been exhibited in galleries in New York, Paris, London, Austria and of course, Cyprus. She has won several Gold and Silver Medals in International Photography competitions such as PDN, LensCulture Portrait Awards, IPA, Neutral Density, Prix De La Photographie Paris, MIFA, One Eyeland, Trierenberg Supercircuit, Chromatic Awards etc and was the Digital Camera Photographer Of The Year for 2018.
