If you can hear the passion of a photographer in his voice and know him for over a decade, one knows, that he is on a good track: „I work from real emotions“, Straulino says about his exhibition „Constructivism“ in Gallery Mohr in Hamburg - it has been exhibited in Berlin already - and „I say farewell somewhat tenderly to the colours of my pictures“.
There is a Bauhaus-influence, collages, graphic elements, dark-blue triangles, black eyelashes on endless white with a blood-red tear, a girl, lacquered in gold, without any make-up - „I am somewhat traumatized by the use of make-up in commercial jobs.“ Nothing less than a „turning away from digital perfection“ is, what interests the 42year old now, whose development over the years is quite impressive.
Straulino does not stand for the origins. Rather for courageous, highly artificial and very stylish portrays of women, who are modern yet timeless. He is an autodidact: Born in Munich in 1973, father of a 16-year-old son, he became independent and settled in Hamburg in 1999, after having been an assistant in Miami and Los Angeles, then based himself in Berlin in 2006, with a studio in New York since 2014. His Fashion- and Beauty-Shoots hgave him a certain name, though the term Beauty-photography „gives me the creeps“. He has a faible for Close-ups, „I always wanted to be as near as possible to the subject.“
That there is a love for women is well understood, but that the models morph into ornaments, become ornamental in the sense of the word, opens up a new direction. „Small teams, a distance from fiction“ marks him out, he wants to create his works, „out of the head into the heart“ - and thus they should be seen. Any role-models?
„The great tzechoslovacian photographer František Drtikol, a master of the Nude in the Twenties, who experimented with masks“ - there lies the spirit of the spectacular pictures. They have been shot over the last year in NYC, Berlin and Paris, they are abstract, mask-like, full of strong colours and geometric forms.

Pictures keeping the viewer in a certain distance, modern yet classical, stage-like, somewhat alluding to Man Ray or the formal strictness of Fritz Lang´s Metropolis. And how does he see himself? Poses questions like „Does one speak in order to be heard?“ - a career indeed, that can be followed with utmost interest in the years to come, that´s for sure.

More information at: photographygalerie.de