PHOTO JOURNALISM THAT ROCKS ––
Five Decades of MUSIC
53 years as Ohio's longest standing culture journalist: According to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum, Anastasia Pantsios has been photographing and writing about the entire length of the Cleveland Music Scene, uninterrupted, since 1972, through the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 10s, 20s into today. "That's half a century of rock history," says Greg Harris, Rock Hall President and CEO.
In roles as a writer and editor at Cleveland Plain Dealer, EXIT Magazine, Free Times, Cleveland Scene, and Cool Cleveland, Anastasia's coverage of major acts and musicians from Cleveland and Akron helped many bands and individual artists break out and reach wider audiences, particularly as she proactively submitted her images to national publications like Rolling Stone, Creem, and more.
Back in 2011, Pantsios' image collection of female artists debuted at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum as an exhibition called, Girls on Film: 40 Years of Women in Rock, which ran for six months.
"As a woman working in a predominantly male industry, I always felt that I captured the shows differently than my male peers. The female fans seemed to feel the female artists in a deeply, more personal way. Their trials and triumphs reflected our stories too."
Due to its public popularity, this second run inspired Pantsios to compile her first published book, Girls to the Front: 40 Years of Women in Rock (2017). The book showcased her powerful portraits of female rock icons like Tina Turner, Patti Smith, Joan Jett, Grace Slick, Courtney Love, Gwen Stefani, and Stevie Nicks, documenting women's evolving roles, resilience, and cultural impact in a male-dominated genre, from the late '60s into the 21st century.
As 2027 approaches, Pantsios is preparing to mount Five Decades of Rock & Roll as a traveling exhibition to feature 53 years of photographic concert coverage, spanning every generation of musicians in rock, including the last ten years of Northeast Ohio artists. Today, Anastasia Pantsios is one of the last living Ohio journalists whose ongoing work has been published continuously over five decades.
Archiving The Music History of Northeast Ohio
NEO SOUND
The Anastasia Pantsios Collection is part of NEO SOUND, a Rock Hall initiative aimed at preserving the history of rock and roll in NE Ohio. Her work as a journalist for over five decades created the most extensive collection of photos and written documentation of the NE Ohio area music scene. This collection consists of her photos, radio station playlists and written articles about performers who's music was played live and on-air in Cleveland, Ohio. The collection provides insight into the performers who allowed themselves and their performances to be photographed by female rock photographers, as women were finally gaining a foothold in the journalism ranks, led by Rolling Stone's Annie Leibovitz.
Image: Stiv Bators (1949 - 1990)
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