Shutterbug Love

Flagler tennis player Jutronic opens photograpy show at local gallery

By Cassaundra Seeley

Mario Jutronic is not your average artist. He doesn’t spend hours toiling in the studio; he spends them on the tennis court. He isn’t worried about his senior portfolio show; he’s worried about his business capstone class. To Jutronic, 21, art isn’t something he’s pursuing, but it is something he’s good at.

Now Jutronic has a show, “Perspectus,” of his photography at the Energy Lab art gallery on King Street. “I took an art class with (Assistant Professor Patrick) Moser and after that I would bring in my portfolio now and again for him to look at it,” Jutronic said. “One day he just said, ‘Get out of here and go show it to someone else and do something with it.’ So I did.”

Jutronic took his work and presented it at an audition of sorts held by local galleries. He took his photos and made his pitch and “they offered me the opportunity,” Jutronic said.
For Jutronic, the first time he picked up a camera wasn’t a life altering moment. “I don’t really remember it,” he said.

Photography was a hobby. “I just go and have fun with it. I never took any classes, never read any books about it. I think that if you just go and experience yourself, it’s better and that’s what I’m doing. I’m just having fun with it.”

Having been born in Croatia and living in Hong Kong and Japan, as well as the United States, Jutronic feels his experience with diverse cultures has given him a broader, more unusual perspective that is reflected in his work. “When you live different places you learn to see and appreciate the unusual.”

Jutronic says putting together the show was more difficult than he thought it would be. Not only was it more expensive to mat and frame his work than he expected, juggling tennis practice and midterms as well wasn’t easy.

Neither, it seems, was it easy to select the photos for the show. “You have so many photos and they’re all good somehow or another, but it’s finding the ones that have that special quality about them. I may go out and shoot 30 or 40 photos and come home, and only two of them are worth anything. Being able to recognize those two photos isn’t easy,” he said.

Jutronic’s favorite photo in the show is one he took in Times Square. “You can see the shadows of the umbrellas and lights behind,” he said. “I think it captures the rush of the city.”

But Jutronic isn’t looking to just take “nice” photos. “I don’t want people to just say, ‘Oh, that’s a nice piece,’ and move on. I want my photos to evoke something, something deeper, more rare. I want people to take more than one look at a piece just because something in it calls to them.”
The same emotional draw is what drives Jutronic’s work. “Each piece has a different feeling,” he said. “I look through the camera and as long as I feel something — right, wrong — I just trust.”

At the moment, Jutronic is looking to go to graduate school after graduation, but his photography isn’t something he sees himself giving up. “My photography evolves and changes every year and as long as I’m with it and as long as I feel good about it I’ll continue to do it.”

Jutronic’s show at the Energy Lab art Gallery runs through May.