Thanassis Stavrakis was born in Stockholm in 1973.
He graduated from the School of Study and Practice of Photography (EMEF) in Athens.
He has been working as a photojournalist since August 1992.
Until 1997, he worked for Greek photo agencies in Athens, covering domestic and international news, feature stories, sports and traveling as a correspondent through Greece and abroad.
He worked for the daily newspaper Ethnos from 1997 to 1999 covering major news stories in Greece and abroad.
He was freelancer for the Greek weekly magazine Epsilon of Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia from 1999-2001.
During that collaboration he began working for the Associated Press in Athens as a news photographer.
He has been working with Tachydromos magazine of Ta Nea newspaper since November 2006 until 2010.
The last 19 years he has covered dozens major social and sports events around the world for the ASSOCIATED PRESS (Olympic Games, Soccer World Cups and Euro Championships, World and Euro Basketball tournaments, World Swimming Championships, Formula 1 circuits, riots and clashes in Istanbul). Since 2008 he covered and edited clashes in Athens, Financial Crisis and the refugee crisis in Greece.
From June 2014 Thanassis Stavrakis is AP chief photographer responsible for Greece, Cyprus, Albania and North Macedonia.
