Raul Ariano
Shanghai, Shanghai, China
Raul Ariano is an Italian photographer based in Shanghai (China), specializing in portraits.
He has always been captivated by the expressiveness of human faces and bodies, which can tell stories with no need for words or sounds. An observer of the margins, through his portraits, he has been telling the forgotten tales of those who are often invisible. Since 2014, he has opened a window for the world to peek into the lives of LGBTQ communities in China. Shocked by the first pandemic outbreak in the city of Wuhan, he directed his interest in outcasts into photographing the artificial and yet very real loneliness forced by the world’s first lockdown. Thanks to this project, entitled The Spring Has Yet to Come, Raul was selected to participate in the prestigious 2020 Eddie Adams Workshop, where he won the National Geographic Award.
Raul is a global citizen, and his fascination with the intricacies of human life propels his desire to travel. He was born and raised in Milan, where he began his professional apprenticeship, which he completed in New York City. He then traveled to the Far East as a freelance photographer. After a brief stint in Tokyo and Hong Kong before settling between Shanghai, China and Bangkok, Thailand.
His work has been published in TIME Magazine, The Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times, The British Journal of Photography, Stern, DER SPIEGEL, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Le Monde, Bloomberg Markets, Bloomberg Businessweek, Die Zeit, Zeit Magazin among others.
Among his corporate and commercial clients Raul has worked with Zeiss, Nestlé, DIOR, Getty Images, IKEA, FAO, IMF, Philips, Dainese, Volvo, Golden Goose, Hogan, WeWork, McKinsey, Cambridge, and Wedgwood.
2020 - Sony Photography Award (shortlisted), 2020 - Hellerau Portrait 2020 (3rd prize), 2019 - PDN Annual , 2019 - World Report Award (Shortlisted)
- Corporate
- Editorial
- Events
- Portrait
- Reporting
- English
- Italian
- Japanese
- Chinese
