Alex Istudor (MA Theatre Directing), shares his journey of artistic discovery.
I have been connected to Royal Holloway for more than 10 years now. I initially moved here from Romania to do an MA in Theatre Directing and have been pursuing that as a freelancer ever since graduating. At the same time, I also became a member of staff during my postgraduate studies here and then continued to remain connected to the college in various capacities across Royal Holloway’s professional services departments. This place has always been my safe space and refuge – no matter the changes in the world and around us, I felt at ease and welcomed by this unique campus. The incredible premises we have, the location just outside London that offers the best of both worlds and, most importantly, the cosmopolitan dimension of the student and staff community here, they all contributed to finding something I still call home.
During the pandemic something changed substantially on the artistic side for me. Theatre became almost impossible to accomplish due to the Covid restrictions. All my creative energy that I used to invest in that medium needed something else to be funneled towards. Three years ago I decided to pick up photography as a creative endeavor. It did not take me long to realize that compared to theatre directing work, where projects take a lot of time, energy and patience to come to fruition, photography is a much more immediate medium. You can see something happening in front of your eyes and immortalize that moment in a matter of a few seconds. It is a medium that makes you more aware of your surroundings and what's happening like nothing else; your mind ends up seeing potential subjects everywhere you go.
As you can imagine, the Royal Holloway campus featured a lot in my photography from the very beginning. The first photography project I started (and still ongoing) was called “Royal Holloway – Campus Scenes” and it features artistic photos taken around the campus. From black and white architectural photos of Founders to capturing images of the campus throughout all its seasonal splendor, light and colors. Even today, I still add photos to this project as I never get tired of photographing this place and always find something new and inspiring that I haven’t noticed before.
In spring 2023 it occurred to me that, by focusing solely on landscape and architecture at Royal Holloway, I was missing the most important part of the university: its people. I also felt that I needed a new photography project with a different aim, that would take me out of my comfort zone and challenge me to expand my photography into a different sphere. In June 2023, I started RHUL PEOPLE - a photography project focused exclusively on portraits of students, staff and alumni. I wanted to capture the diversity of the people who study and work at Royal Holloway and demonstrate the transitory nature of student experience. Whether for 3 years or 5 or 7 or even longer, at some point most of us will move on. But deep down we will all remain connected to this special place and retain some memories of it. This project is still ongoing, and I photographed around 50 subjects part of it over a two years period.
My most recent photography project connected to Royal Holloway started in the summer of 2025 and it is called RHUL-THEN AND NOW. It’s very different than anything I’ve done because it consists of recreations of photos from the college’s archive in a contemporary setting and context. It’s meant to underline the aspects that changed and the ones that stayed the same at Royal Holloway. Back in July 2025, with the help of a group of students, I was lucky enough to be able to recreate this photo from 1895 taken by a lecturer in mathematics on the south terrace.
Lately I started making a bit of an income too from photography, focusing on graduation portraits, events, family photoshoots and events. Interesting enough, my clients tend to all be connected to RHUL - alumni, recent graduates, students and their societies, staff. Which is always wonderful because I always feel it’s like working with a very specific community that shares at least the memory of this beautiful and special place.
Sadly, I can only share a fraction of the images that I captured over the last 3 years, but all my projects have a specially dedicated section on my photography website if you would like to ever have a more expansive look into my work and a short trip down the memory lane for all have you who graduated in the Egham campus: alexistudor.myportfolio.com.
I also post frequently on my Instagram page: @istudor.alexandru. Feel free to connect with me there.
