Strauss Louw
Strauss Louw was born in 1992 in South Africa. In 2021, he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Stellenbosch, and currently lives and works in Somerset West, South Africa.
Louw’s practice could be described as a visual exploration of desire, environment, the gaze and the photograph as an object to possess. Sensitively capturing his subject in candid or posed moments of intimacy, Louw crafts the male body and precious materials into unique objects using analogue photographic techniques.
His desire to photograph is motivated not by its potential for possession but rather as a way to generate material, continually growing a collection of images to use in his studio practice. The photograph as object is braced by his understanding of its surface as a site of sensory interplay, either through the intimate tactility of silk and cotton or through the reflective pane of glass, mirror, and gold leaf in which Louw turns the gaze both ways, presenting the viewer with their own reflection.