VALERIO GERACI - EXPOSURE INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

America is a passion that goes back to when I was a child. When I was 8 or 9 years old I was already a victim of the so-called “American soft power“. I loved American movies, comics and music and I was dreaming to travel through this country from big cities to uncontaminated nature. When I was 12 or 13 I bought my first photographic book about the US. I was fascinated by the photos of never-ending landscapes and of the roads crossing them. Throughout the high school years, I fell in love with American writers as Steinbeck and Kerouac and songwriters as Don McLean and Simon and Garfunkel.

The first time I went, I was still a law student, I saved some money and hit the road with my Pauline. We camped, slept in the car and cheap motels, living the trip hour by hour. We got lost into the flow of the towns and endless sky of the American Southwest from Texas to California. I remember the Death Valley at night, the living silence around us. That first trip was like a dream come true.

In 2013 I got my Master in Law and started to work for a British law firm. I was not happy with the life I was carrying on, it was not what I dreamt of. The day after I finished reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, I resigned from my job and followed my dream to live as a photographer. I went back to the United States in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2022.

During these trips my love towards America remained the same as when I was a child but also became more aware and mature. I love America as one loves a person, aware of its beauty and contradictions.

BIOGRAPHY

My name is Valerio Geraci and I am an Italian photographer born in Palermo (Italy) in 1988 and based in Paris, France. I began my career as a lawyer after a bachelor and master in law at Bocconi University in Milan.

In 2014 I decided to change course and devote myself completely to my passion : photography. I attended Speos Photography Institute in Paris. I work as a freelance photographer and videographer since 2015 in interiors, fashion and portraiture. Since 2020 I am adjunct faculty at Paris College of Art. I also develop long term projects on landscape and portraiture, mainly in my homeland Sicily and in the United States.

American Eden is currently under publication by Urbanautica Institute.

My work has been published by magazines such as AD Magazine, Vogue France, Le Monde, L'Officiel, Elle, Monocle, and exhibited in France, Italy, Germany, the United States and Canada.