ITALIAN Vogue, American Vogue and The Face magazine. It's all a long way from Bury Camera Club. But that's exactly where international fashion photographer Elaine Constantine started out.

An exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is charting the important role that Elaine, from Elton, played in the changing face of fashion photography over the last decade.

The exhibition will run until March and the Elaine's photographs are plastered all over London's underground stations to promote it.

Former St Gabriels pupil Elaine Constantine first became interested in photography while hanging around the mod scooter scene in the early 1980s. Fed up and on the dole, she went along to Bury Camera Club, based in Silver Street. "The tutor who was there was great, he really liked the pictures that I'd taken of my mates who were mods and encouraged me to study photography properly."

Elaine learnt invaluable lessons at the club about black and white photography and how to handle sophisticated cameras.

After going on to do her City and Guilds in photography at South Manchester College, Elaine went on to work as a photographer in the archaeology department at Manchester University.

After another job at Salford University, she got her big break in London with top fashion photographer Nick Knight. But she found some aspects of life in the capital quite disheartening.

"It's quite soul destroying when you move to London and do this kind of thing. You realise that people in this environment are from backgrounds with a lot of money.

"The 90s let people in that weren't from that background. Before that it was only the David Baileys of this world who got there."

Elaine's magazine work oozes with the fun and vitality that have become her trademark.

These qualities are abundant in the works that are on display at the exhibition, which is all about the process of bringing a fashion concept together.

It includes photo-booth pictures of friends from Bury.

"That was just messing around but it was all part of it," said Elaine.

Now that she's reached the top of the tree in the world of fashion photography, Elaine, who uses her mother's maiden name Constantine professionally, works for Vogue, the Face magazine and Arena.

Her work is held in such high esteem that she was featured on the front page of American Vogue as one of the magazine's "women to watch".

In addition to magazine photography she has also worked on CD covers, including the Robbie Williams album I've Been Expecting You and singles covers for top pop bands like Moloko.

She has also done advertising work for Levis, Adidas and Nike.

Recently she married her Italian husband, Marco Santucci, who runs his own photography business, and life in the metropolis couldn't be better.

Elaine's parents, Sam and Norah Fletcher, still live in Douglas Avenue, Elton, but as to the question of whether she will return Elaine says it is unlikely.

"I come up for visits every now and again and still have a house up there but I can't sell it.

"I went up to Manchester a while back and was asked 'Why are you working from London? Why not come back up here?'

"The answer is that I don't think it would do my career any good. It may be possible in the future through technology, but for now you need to be down in London for a job like this."