by Editor Marius Cinteză
Edited and published by Yvette Deaepe, the 5th of December 2025 

Claudiu Guraliuc is a full-time portrait photographer and educator hailing from Cluj, Romania, whose work transcends traditional boundaries, blending technical mastery with high art. A Master Photographer, Claudiu holds esteemed distinctions, including Associate of The Master Photographers Association (UK) and Professional Associate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. His portfolio over the last five years, encompassing more than 100 international couples and diverse commercial clients, from IT firms to luxury retailers.
His commitment to excellence has earned him top global recognition. In 2020, he was named Fine Art Photographer of the Year at the Master Photography Awards Gala (UK) for his baroque-inspired work, followed by the coveted International Master Photographer of the Year 2021 award.
In a historic achievement for Romanian photography, Claudiu won the European Bronze Camera in Fine Art from the Federation of European Professional Photographers (FEP) in 2023.
Most recently, in June 2024, he secured the prestigious Laudamus Prize for Sacred Art in the UK, prevailing over 1,200 artists globally. His acclaimed artwork is featured in galleries and private collections across Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Join me as we step behind the scenes to uncover more about Claudiu's unique vision and journey in this exclusive full interview!

The Last Chew

Beyond your renown in photography, what personal interests or unique hobbies offer balance to your artistic focus?

When I’m not in the studio, you’ll most likely find me in the kitchen or on the couch. I love to cook—slow dishes, sauces that take patience, stuff like that. And I binge-watch TV shows, especially sci-fi. World-building relaxes me and perhaps secretly fuels my work; a good series is a lesson in lighting, composition, and myth.

Pentheus and the Maenads

Looking back, what was the defining moment when you realized photography was your personal connection to the world?
How deeply does this medium define you?

Discovering pictorialism was the spark. It told me that photography could carry the weight, ambiguity, and tenderness of painting—that it could be interpretive, not merely descriptive. Since then, life has narrowed beautifully to two axes: family and photography. They’re not separate; my family gives purpose to the work, and the work gives structure to our life.

 Adoration

Your style is fine-art portraiture. What draws you so strongly to a conceptual, human-centred approach?

People are inexhaustible. A face is geography, history, theatre, and prayer—often in the same minute. Conceptual portraiture lets me stage that inner weather. I can borrow symbols from myth and painting, then invite a living, breathing person to animate them. When the concept and the human line up, a portrait becomes a mirror for the viewer too.

 Allegory of War

What elements or sources of inspiration keep you creating new works?

I believe our images say more about us than about our subjects. They’re sediments of our experiences, memories, books, music, dreams—and yes, our traumas and biases. I read widely, listen to music obsessively, and keep notes on colour moods and story fragments. Everything eventually distils into a picture. I also think the brain is a very simple tool—brilliant, but simple. It tends to produce echoes of whatever you feed it. If you live on a diet of trends and short clips, it will remix trends and short clips. If you nourish it with painting, poetry, theology, science fiction, Baroque aesthetic, silence, and real conversation, it will return work with deeper fibres. So I curate my inputs like I colour-manage my workflow: museum days, rereading the Old Masters, long playlists, good novels, and intentional “fasts” from the algorithm. Cross-pollination matters; I’d rather steal a chord progression from Monteverdi or a sentence rhythm from Márquez than another lighting setup from Instagram. What you feed grows—and I want my work to grow from timeless sources.

 Adam and Eve

In your niche, what’s the most persistent creative or logistical challenge?

Casting and logistics. Finding the right collaborators—models who embody a concept, stylists who understand restraint, access to wardrobe/props with timeless patina—takes time. Practically, there’s budget math, shipping large prints safely, and defending long pre-production windows in a world that wants things “by Friday”. And then there’s space: staging ambitious sets requires square meters I don’t always have—studio rent in my city makes “room to think” a very real, very monthly challenge. Creatively, the hardest discipline is staying brave enough to make work for myself first, markets second. The moment you start creating what you think others will like, you step onto a treadmill of futility—forever chasing an ever-shifting taste. I’d rather miss a trend than miss my voice.

Adoration II

What turns a good portrait into an exceptional one?

The most truthful moments live between gestures—when you feel safe enough to be present without a mask. That’s why great portraits aren’t about perfect smiles; they’re about honesty and permission to appear exactly as you are. Add to that: a clear intention, a hierarchy in composition, light that shapes meaning (not just exposure), color harmony that supports the emotion, eloquent hands, and edges that guide attention. And patience. Lots of patience and perseverance.

Birth of Venus

How do you communicate your vision to models—scripts, dialogue, or something else?

I start with a model call tailored to the concept. Once cast, we build a shared language: a moodboard, references, a brief “script” of emotional beats, and a group chat for practicalities. We meet or at least talk through things like wardrobe, gesture, and pacing.
On set I direct through verbs and feelings rather than rigid poses, leaving space for the subject’s own authorship.

Bubblegum Flamingo

How do you balance rigorous preparation with on-set instinct?

Planning is my superpower. I map everything I possibly can: props, blocking, lighting diagrams, and value structure in advance. But I operate a 90/10 rule: 90% is premeditated so that 10% can be discovery. I always leave one variable open—a hand, an expression, a drape, a shaft of light. That’s where life slips in.

Dualities

Beyond technique, what artistic principles or colour choices create the mystical, ethereal quality in your images?

I often favour analogous colour harmonies, much like many Renaissance artists used to describe form and space. I keep the hue of shadows closely related to the lit areas to create believable transitions and a three-dimensional presence, preserving local colour while modelling with tonal range. Value design comes first; chroma is then tempered like glazes. Saturation is earned, not assumed.

 Like Father like Son

Where does a story begin for you—emotion, prop, or myth?

With a closed-eye picture. I need to be able to “project” the final image on the inside of my eyelids: light direction, colour, composition, the weight of fabric, where the hands rest, the expressions of the models. Once I can see it, the rest is translation—taking the story from mind to studio.

 Antonomasia

How important is it that viewers read your intended narrative versus completing it themselves?

Photography is communication, and every message passes through both the sender’s and the receiver’s filters. I try to craft a clear intention and a scaffold of symbols, but I want the viewer to bring their history to it. Ambiguity isn’t a mistake; it’s an invitation.

Bubblegum Bacchus

The gear debate is endless. What’s your go-to setup right now?

For studio work I rely on the Fuji GFX100S paired with the GF 110mm f/2. The medium-format files give me generous tonality and a graceful falloff around the subject—perfect for painterly work. I tether, light with large sources feathered across the form, and shape with flags and negative fill. Lenses are tools; the 110/2, in particular, is my favourite for rendering faces and bodies.

Portrait of a Lady and Her Ancestor

You won the FEP European Bronze Camera (2023) and the Laudamus Prize for Sacred Art (2024).
How did these shape your vision and development?

They were milestones of encouragement and responsibility. Recognition opened doors to institutions and collaborators I admire, but more importantly it challenged me to refine my voice—to pursue deeper research, better craft, and bolder narratives. Awards fade; the obligation to grow remains. The only real competition is with yourself and the struggle of being a little bit better than yesterday.

 Invisible Tempest

Describe a recent favourite photograph and the story behind it.

Pietà is dear to me. I wanted to re-engage a sacred archetype through contemporary portraiture—grief as a universal, not historical, condition. We built it with real drapery, restrained palette, and meticulous hands placement. The light is feathered from above-left, with negative fill to keep the values solemn. There’s a quiet halo suggested by separation, not a graphic line. On set, we let silence do the directing. What moved me most was the tenderness between the models when the camera wasn’t clicking—that “between gestures” truth.

Pieta

Which photographers, artists, or mentors have most influenced your eye?

I began as a wedding photographer, and Jerry Ghionis was my first true mentor—his approach to light, posing, and storytelling taught me discipline and empathy. Beyond photography, the Old Masters—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Vermeer—are my compass for value, colour, and narrative restraint. Among photographers, the pictorialists (Cameron, Stieglitz, Steichen), and modern voices like Paolo Roversi continue to teach me sensitivity.

Judith with the Head of Holofernes

What exciting projects or new directions are next for you?

Introspecții (Introspections) is my current long-form project. It’s a studio portrait series where each sitter holds a mirror. In that mirror, they choose—without my intervention—what to reveal: something intimate, usually kept hidden. The primary portrait shows the face we offer the world; the mirror discloses a private truth. Participants are volunteers, co-authors of their image. The project will live as an exhibition, a book, and a set of limited prints, maybe with an educational program built around it. It’s about courage, permission, and the double exposure of being human in our day and age.

Cupid Chastised

 Ecstatic Dance of Duality I

Ecstatic Dance of Duality II

Gamblers