Photography, visual storytelling, and anthropology workshop with Eleni Albarosa

Beyond Folklore: Photographing Tradition, Carnival & Representation

When: February 19–25, 2026
Where: Photometria Photography Center - Ioannina
Participants: 4 to 10 people

 Photography, visual storytelling, and anthropology workshop with Eleni Albarosa | in collaboration with Photometria – Ioannina
During Carnival in Ioannina and Epirus, this 6-day intensive workshop offers an immersion into documentary photography of local traditions, focusing on the Tzamalas and regional carnival rituals.  Through a combination of field practice and theoretical reflection, we will explore the boundary between lived tradition and stereotyped folklore, learning to capture the festivities with a critical and respectful gaze, while developing your personal photographic voice and refining your visual language.
Each day includes photography and editing sessions, collective image review, discussions on narrative choices, and exploration of ethics, access to contexts, and relationships with subjects. The workshop concludes with the creation of a coherent and personal photographic narrative.

Open to photographers of all levels. The workshop is not strictly in Greek explanations and discussions can also be provided in English, Italian, or Spanish. 

Requirements: digital camera, prime lens, and laptop

Workshop Goals
The workshop aims to:
- develop each participant’s visual language and artistic autonomy
-cultivate a personal and critical approach to documentary photography
-encourage reflection on issues of power, ethics, and representation in the photographic documentation of traditions
-accompany participants in the creation and development of a coherent photographic project
-Particular emphasis will be placed on the idea that every photograph is inseparably connected to the history, background, and lived experiences of its maker.
Photography thus becomes a space of relationship, listening, and responsibility.

Ethics and Fieldwork
A central axis of the workshop is the discussion around the photographer’s ethical position in the field, especially within ritualistic and communal environments.
Key questions will be addressed, such as:
-How do we approach individuals and communities during festivals and performative events?
-Images: why are they made, for whom, and for what purpose?
-How do we build a relationship of respect with the people we photograph?
-Photography and the exoticizing gaze
Ethics will not be approached as a set of abstract rules, but as an everyday practice that permeates access, presence, time, listening, and reciprocity.

Methodology
The workshop is structured as a collective class, grounded in sharing, dialogue, and continuous exchange.
-Daytime photography during events, rituals, and informal moments of Carnival
-Evening editing and critique sessions, which form the core of the workshop
-Daily work on image selection, sequencing, and the construction of meaning
-Collective discussions around process, intention, and visual choices
Editing is not treated as a final stage, but as a thinking tool: through the selection and discussion of images, participants’ approaches evolve day by day.

 Photographers Bio
Born in Athens, Greece, and raised in Italy, Eleni Albarosa (b. 1996) began photographing at the age of fifteen, the same year she was first published by National Geographic Italy. Her work explores  social realities marked by prejudice, misinformation, or harmful stereotypes, a focus shaped by both her long-standing photographic practice and her Bachelor’s studies in Anthropology, where she graduated with a 105/110 with a thesis on the internal economy of prisons.
Albarosa has over ten years of experience documenting traditional celebrations and rituals. Notably, she spent five years documenting traditional festivals in the Vesuvius area dedicated to seven Madonnas, focusing on participants from the third gender who carry out the rites.
Her projects have taken her to diverse communities, including nomadic circus performers, Romani communities in Italy and Greece, Irish Travellers in the UK, and a theater company of former inmates in Mexico City. She has also collaborated on international projects and been published in outlets such as Collater.al Magazine (2025), National Geographic USA (2024), Billboard (2024), Huck Magazine (2023), Overseas Magazine (2021), and National Geographic Italy (2012). Her commercial and collaborative work includes projects with the Antetokounbros Academy, Nike (2021), and Eleusis City of Culture 2023. In 2024, she launched La Ternura es Radical, a project documenting former prisoners working as actors in Mexico City, in collaboration with anthropologist Jorge Varela Perera.
This project earned her the Canon Student Development Program award at Perpignan 2024 and a selection for the Hamburg Portfolio Review. Albarosa has received numerous international recognitions, including awards from The Independent Photographer, Bruxelles Street Photo Festival, Women Street Photographers, Trieste Photo Awards, and Eyeshot Magazine. In 2025, she was named among ARTPIL’s 30 Under 30 Women Photographers and joined the jury of the SPLITFORMAT Photo Festival. In the same year, her work has been exhibited internationally in Belgium (Brussels), France (Arles), and Italy (Bologna, Treviso, Trieste, Torino).
She was also selected for the free masterclass with Magnum photographer Enri Canaj at Athens Photo World, taking place in early 2026.