Erwin Rittenschober

Master of the colours is what Straulino called me, his printer, years ago when he just started his career – almost reverently. Himself he referred to as the small photographer Straulino. That was roughly 15 years ago when he discovered photography and our paths crossed. Nowadays the small photographer who to this day talks about taking snapshots is a big name amongst his colleagues. If one draws his attention to his unusual development, he himself is the most astonished about it... It was only with the ardent stolidness of a nosy child that he saw photography unfurl in front of him like a surprise packet... Then there was his friend David Luther. In 1995 he tagged along with him to Prague, rented a studio from a czech photographer and the two experimented with endless series of pictures. Hours, days, whole nights, edged on by red wine and enthusiasm – weeks on end. It turned out to be no less than six months. A time he will never forget. With the exception of a few formative friendships, the notoriously ever exploring autodidact Straulino finds it difficult, however, to reflect on the past. He is too much in the present, relishing the here and now far too much. Certainly the future also plays a role in his mind. But only because it is full of new surprises. He is sitting in a sandpit and is allowed to play to his heart's content he states almost incredulously, and he is being paid for it... He never really felt the stress of his job as a beauty photographer. His uninhibited nature must have protected him against it. Thus his talent was allowed to develop freely and unscathed. Perhaps it is this unblocked quality of his personality that fascinates the viewer of his pictures. One searches in vain for the zeitgeist in Straulino's photographs – they are created out of time. And even the individuai aura of his models disintegrates into the abstract – the beautiful become beauty itself. His photographic ideai has been reached by a select few before him. There is Erwin Blumenfeld, one of his favourite photographers. Straulino sometimes discovers pictures in his collection of old photographic volumes which he states are simply beyond some of their contemporary counterparts. Especially images of the forties encapsulate timelessness for him. Modern photography, he says, can only be timeless photography. Somehow it is inevitable that Straulino hardly pays attention to technical equipment and techniques. All he requires to be able to work is music. It puts his models in the right mood that enables him to work. Never hunter but always a quiet companion he captures their movements, their mimicry, their gestures – nonverbal, oblivious to the outside world yet alert with every fibre of his being. A choreography not requiring stage direction, created uniquely and unreproducibly by the intuition and spontaneity of its participants. Wherever in the world my friend Straulino may be working or "playing", I accompany him akin to a satellite. If in the past we discussed who circled who, today I am certain that he is the star whose gravity keeps me in its speli.

Erwin Rittenschober