Every time Panos Gianoukos ‘26 clicks the shutter of his Sony DSLR camera, he captures not just a picture, but a memory forever protected and encapsulated. In his 9th-grade Photography I class, Panos discovered his love and appreciation for the subtle art of composing frames, setting shutter speed and aperture manually for every photo with his first film camera. Although he currently shoots digitally, his early years in analog photography helped him develop his current philosophy about taking photos: slowing down in every frame and focusing on quality over quantity.
Since then, Panos has explored different subject matter and has come to focus on photographing his family’s culture and traditions. Still, he was able to narrow down his photography portfolio to focus on appreciating his family’s cultures and traditions. Panos says, “The overarching theme of my photography is my family, specifically, my Greek family, heritage, and culture. I try to encapsulate what it means to be Greek in my photos and what it means to have a connection with family, while embracing the very family style of Greek culture.”
Although he changed formats over the course of his photography career, moving from film to digital, Panos’s desire to capture moments of family tradition and bonding has always been a central focus of his work. This aspect of continuity has compounded his love for photography; Panos says, “I’ve really grown back to and grown a stronger connection with photography [in these family moments], and that’s definitely something that I love.”
As Panos navigates a shoot, he maintains the balance between being in the moment and locking in to compose his outstanding photographs, whether it’s out and about or at a dinner with his extended family. Ensuring that his subjects don’t react or notice his photography in action while keeping the focus, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings correct can make his strain of photography particularly challenging. Nevertheless, Panos has developed a strategy of stealth in order to capture the authenticity of each moment; “I go to these [family dinners], I’ll bring my camera, really just trying to be in the moment. I really don’t like it when people know that I’m taking photos of them, so I tell everyone to just act normal and keep eating. Then, I’ll kind of leave the room for a couple of minutes, and then kind of like sneak back in quietly and see if I can really get some really raw photos. So a lot of it’s, a lot of it’s on the go, just like moving around that space.” By diving deep into his own photography career, Panos came to appreciate not only the subtlety of creating everlasting images but also his heritage and Greek culture. Panos Gianoukos’s career as a photographer is marked by his commitment to portraying Greek culture and his family tradition, providing the Belmont Hill community with a powerful example of how students can appreciate their own culture and heritage through the arts.
