Croatian art photographer and sculptor Stephan Lupino is coming to Široki Brijeg, where he is going to have a workshop on the subject “Art photography in the digital age” within the Mediterranean Film Festival” and “Youth across borders” forum. The forum is organized as part of the project "Connecting perspectives: Youth across borders", financed by the Ministry of Regional Development and European Union funds, and in partnership with the Development Agency of Dubrovnik-Neretva County DUNEA. In addition to the lecture he is holding today at 4:30 p.m. in the City Library in Široki Brijeg, Lupino is going to visit and photograph the residents of the "Marija naša nada" center, children with disabilities.

“I am especially sensitive to sick and poor children. It breaks my heart when I see this. This is the reason I couldn’t refuse this invitation, and we decided to make an exhibition in order to help the little ones and this Center”, said the famous photographer. It has been a very productive period for him in the recent past, especially during the Covid pandemic. He also opened an exhibition in Belišće called "The Art of Parallel Worlds" at the beginning of September 2024, as part of which he traditionally donated several works for humanitarian purposes, while just a few months earlier he presented a sculpture in the Dragon Garden in Štrigova, near Varaždin. This monumental sculptor, weighing half a ton, is just the first in line in the series of Lupino’s new works inspired by dragons, but with the good dragons as the artist points out. “I am not making dangerous dragons. I am making sculptures dedicated to mythological creatures, with positive characteristics. I am currently working on a series of smaller paintings, because during Covid I made a huge number of works, capital ones. The motives are male and female bodies, but I don't do cheesy stuff like some, it's always something out of line,'' he explains.

Although our society is prone to criticism, Lupino does not pay too much attention to them, he creates in his own artistic direction and states that it is a special energy that is difficult to explain to those who do not feel it. "Critics have never known how to put me in a certain style and I said it didn't even matter. Not even Michelangelo went to the Academy. But, in our parts this is important and this is something that people pay attention to. The style I am creating is Lupinism , and this is some other dimension, because most of my paintings are a “another world”. When I don't know how to name them, I say "another world". It's hard to understand who isn't in it and who doesn't feel it,'' he adds.

In Široki Brijeg, in addition to spending time with residents of the Marija Naša Nada center, they are also holding a forum for young people on the topic of "Art photography in the digital age". In this field, his style, for which he became recognizable, was shaped by erotic photography, and in addition to predominantly male nudes, he also did a lot of portraits. As he says, he took up camera relatively late, in his thirties, but he knew right away that this was it.

“It all started in a stormy way. From Rome, London to New York. I started as a bodyguard, champion of Yugoslavia in karate. I had clubs in Italy and I was the team champion of Italy. In this period, in the late seventies, Rome was “Dolce Vita”. After this I went to London, and finally end up in the USA where it all started. I was working as a model, did a lot of posing, for Italian and American Vogue among others. I borrowed a camera from an assistant photographer in the end of 1983, and took some of my first pictures. And that's where my career started,'' he recalls his beginnings.

Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente... that's the scene that surrounded him, but he says he never "ran after the famous", it didn't impress him. “This is probably why I became famous; I didn’t care about the stars. I have never worked as a paparazzo, this is some other energy. I have done a lot of nudes, portraits and a lot of night photographs, that’s why they called me the king of the night. I was full of energy, well trained and arrogant for no reason. But, people have always liked me, they felt my, as they often called it, rocket energy”.

The time spent abroad is still a source of inspiration for him, and it has never happened to him that he looks at a blank canvas and doesn't know what to do. He always has something to say. He says that he doesn’t have any special role models, even though he thinks that there are pretty good artists today, but he doesn’t relate to anyone.  He doesn't have time to hang out with artists, he says, physical work and samurai discipline reign. ” Cosmic energy and uniqueness, and physical work. I do what I feel, there is no calculation. I let myself go, I am heading to some divine energy and I am not stopping. I have many reasons for this. I have created works in twenty years as a couple of artists in a hundred years. I don't waste time, because maybe I started doing it late in life, but I had my own life academy,'' he explains.

Today after all he does not have any big wishes. They are not for him. He has the peace in life and this is what he appreciates the most. He is not worried about his art, it will continue, and personally, what he wants is the thing that brings us to the beginning of the story - to do good deeds. Cataclysm. Today, I would only like to be a good person, to do good deeds, to help a lot. And what else is left for us in life, to look at ourselves?'' Lupino concludes.