An avid traveler, storyteller and adventurer, Thea Bellos has chosen photography as her medium to tell her story and document the beauty and challenges facing the natural and built environment across the globe.  Her images also pay tribute to people who have struggled with and triumphed over adversity, war, religious intolerance, environmental destruction and personal challenges so that their stories may be told. With the mystery and uncertainty we all face, she finds expression through these glances and “the decisive moment” that Henri Cartier-Bresson impressed upon her early in her career through his influential body of work.

 

       Her wide interest in archaeology, architecture, dance, the visual arts, cultural anthropology and cooking have been drivers in her passionate quest for beauty and preserving the environment.  Over the past thirty-five years, this passion has led her to the far corners of the world to such faraway places as pre-Taliban Afghanistan and India in the 70s, Buddhist monasteries in Japan on Honshu and Kyushu islands in the 80s, and eastern Turkey in the mid-90s. Most recently, she has traveled extensively throughout Cuba, South America, China and SE Asia,  During the Spring 2008, she taught onboard The Scholarship and explored  South Africa, The Seychelles, Cape Verde, as well as, 8 other ports of call on this global voyage.

 

    Bellos has worked in various settings as an arts administrator for the San Francisco Art Commission and the Oakland Ballet, marketing director of an environmental consulting firm, and as an professor teaching international business at several universities in the Bay Area and on The Scholar Ship, an international teaching vessel circumnavigating the globe. Since 1991, she has served as the founding principal of The Bellos Group, a global marketing and management consulting firm.  Bellos opened her Berkeley studio, THEA BELLOS Photography, and has exhibited her work at venues throughout the Bay Area. She received commendation her Cuba Series from the International Photography Awards Program. Bellos also participates annually in Pro Arts’ and Berkeley Artisans’ Open Studios at her studio in Berkeley. She is currently serving as the Principle of the Bellos Group, a global marketing and management consulting firm, and President of The Global Stewards Institute, a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization.