About

Anastasia Pantsios is an award-winning photojournalist who has documented the theater of life for over five decades. She’s always been drawn to shooting people in performance or performance-like situations, dating back to her early days in grad school at Case Western University’s Theater Department as a lighting designer and photographer of stage productions. During that period, she also wrote reviews for the CWRU Observer, obtaining tickets to all the major concerts taking place in downtown Cleveland — Led Zeppelin, Credence Clearwater, Crosby Stills and Nash, the Who, the Doors. She began submitting her photos to small local publications, then to larger regional and national ones, and a career was born.

During her busiest period of shooting music in the 1980s, her work appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, Spin, the Village Voice, Esquire, Creem, Hit Parader, Circus, People, the New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Toronto Star, and USA Today. Hundreds of Anastasia's photographs have been used in books, tour programs and documentaries, and on album jackets by artists including Eric Clapton, Southside Johnny, AC/DC, Styx, Kurtis Blow, LaBelle, Michael Stanley, Robert Palmer, Metallica and the James Gang. She was also the photographer for the Cleveland Opera for eight years. 

By the early ’90s, Anastasia had moved on to other things, including writing features for alternative weeklies and shooting chefs, food and news events, as well as some music. She became a writer and photographer for The Patrol (1990 - 1992), U.S. Rocker (1992 - 1998), The Free Times (1992 - 1998), The Plain Dealer (1998 - 2003) and Cleveland Scene (2003 - 2012). 

She spent some time shooting professional wrestling and, more recently, Cleveland’s thriving neo-burlesque scene. Her work has been seen in more than 30 art exhibits in Cleveland, Akron, Chicago, and Lehigh University in Bethlehem Pa., including a 2017 show at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum called “Girls on Film: 40 Years of Women in Rock,” which included a book with additional photos.

 Since 2013, Anastasia’s work — both writing and photography — has appeared on CoolCleveland.com, a weekly digital publication with a circulation of about 90,000 where she is currently the Editor in Chief. 

Anastasia's work has been featured in many books, album covers, tour programs, television productions, and other projects for legendary artists including Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Tina Turner, AC/DC, U2, Metallica, Alice Cooper, Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper, Kiss, Van Halen, The Pretenders, Joan Jett, and many more.