My name is Sandro, and I am a photographer. Higher education and the world of academia wasn't part of my creative development growing up. Raised by an Italian single mother of three, getting food on the table became our highest priority. Instead, my education came from my life experiences. I became an astute observer of life around me. With my eyes and soul wide open absorbing and capturing the struggles, pain and the tribulations of life. Through this I learned love, kindness and empathy that flow through my work.
Upon the findings of the work of Irving Penn at 16 years old, I began, whenever possible to collect books in the field of art, (mostly on the Renaissance period) and photography. From these images, I gained the knowledge and the understanding that ignited my passion and career in photography. In the studio or in the field, I became a master of lighting and used it to express and refine the dialogues of life in our times. I am a photographic and video artist with an especial sensitivity to people and cultures. My key component has always been compassion and understanding. My pictures can be cross-platform: B/W, color, film, digital, still or video. I live in Chicago but photograph globally. Beyond technique, I always address truth and candor.
Accordingly, I have created serial imagery of art-historical respectful whimsey (in Malkovich the actor); formal racial Expressivism (in Black Hair); revelatory cultural access (in Bikers and Matadors); a political narrative (In Cuban Portraits); the hopes of the collective (in Cuban Athletes); tribal portraits within a hidden culture (in Papua New Guinea); improbable floating eroticism (in Dancers) and more.
My book publication list begins in 1994 and is ongoing. I would cite: AMERICAN BIKERS (1998 / SchirmerMosel), SANDRO:VERONA FIGURE E RITRATTI (2002 / Cierre Edition), IMAGINE CUBA 1999-2007 (2008 / Edizioni Charta), EL MATADOR JOSELITO: A PICTORIAL NOVEL (2009 / Edition Charta), SANDRO RAW, STEPPENWOLF (2012 / Self-Published), THE MALKOVICH SESSIONS and DANCE FOR LIFE (both 2016 / Glitterati Inc), MALKOVICH, MALKOVICH, MALKOVICH: HOMAGE TO THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MASTERS (2020 / Skira), CROWNS: MY HAIR MY SOUL MY FREEDOM (2021 / Skira), and DEATH IN THE DESERT ( 2021 / Foto Henny Hoogeveen). A NEW AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ( 2023 / Foto Henny Hoogeveen).
A site list of museum and gallery exhibitions includes New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Zagreb, Siberia, Warsaw, Arles/France, Antwerp, Havana, Munich, Portugal, Madrid, Budapest, Istanbul and Verona.
Reviews, interviews, features and essays have been published by or featured in Musée Magazine, Smithsonian, Huffington Post, Interiors, Graphic, Russian Esquire, BBC News, Stern, The New Yorker, American Photo, Eyemazing, ABC News, The Guardian, Communication Art, FotoNostrum, and View Camera among others.
Because I lend my skills and my studio to charitable groups pro bono, I am known as an advocate for causes having to do with art, arts education, health, death and dying, gender, race, national origin, and homelessness. I photograph the forgotten people; those who, each day, suffer and struggle to survive. Further, I work under the intellectual and emotional spell of a location's possibility because it can be a site of curiosity, disclosure, of theatricality or historical importance; at other times, I summon, from within my inventive control of the studio, the truths that sustain life's persistent, vibrant oscillations.
Because of eighteen books, awards and honors, gallery and museum exhibitions, I am recognized as an artist, author, documentarian, philanthropist, publisher, lecturer, teacher, humanist, and, always, a truth-teller.