When you meet someone who tells you:
“When I finished reading East of Eden, I dropped out of law school to become a photographer.”; we can only publish him.
This is what we are doing here with Valerio Geraci who is presenting his book obviously entitled American Eden published by Penisola Edizioni.
His text also beautifully tells his passion for America and Photography.
Jean-Jacques Naudet
American Eden (2024, Penisola Edizioni), my first photographic book, is finalist in the 2024 Lucie Foundation Photo Book Prize.
As a child I dreamed of living in the US, attending an American school, riding my bicycle down a tree-lined driveway all the way to the house with the garden, my room on the second floor.
I wanted to travel the roads that Max and Goofy take to go fishing at Destiny Lake, to go to a concert in Los Angeles, stopping to eat at a diner with checkered floor and sleep in motels.
I remember the first time I listened to Don McLean’s American Pie. On a road trip with my family. France or Austria, 14 or 15 years old. I always sat on the left. From the window my eyes could see the Tyrolean houses passing by with flowering geraniums on the balconies and green meadows in August. My mind saw the desert and the palm trees of California.
I daydreamed about the blond girl, the prettiest girl in school, wishing to take her to the prom.
I remember the nights with Steinbeck and Kerouac in high school, with Bukowski and whiskey in college.
The photographs of Dorothea Lange, Fandango and Paris, Texas. The river of my life diverted at East of Eden.
In 2013 I got my Master in Law and started to work for a law firm.
The day after I finished reading Steinbeck’s East of Eden, I was overwhelmed with fear and courage pushed me to tell my father that I wanted to be a photographer.
I have been to America almost every year from 2016, looking for my dream, trying to embrace the nostalgia for moments I’ve only experienced through the arts.
These trips to America are journeys inside myself, inside my unconscious, inside my future and the knowledge that, since my first trip, I know I will never want to stop.
You can buy American Eden here : https://valeriogeraci.com/american-eden-1/american- eden
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 a law master from Bocconi University in Milan.
In 2014 I decided to change course and devote myself completely to my passion : photography.
I work as a freelance photographer and videographer since 2015 in interiors, lifestyle and portraiture.
Since 2020 I am adjunct teacher 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.
My work has been published by magazines as AD Magazine, Ideat, Vogue France, Le Monde, L’Officiel, Elle, Monocle, Madame Figaro, Elle Decor UK and exhibited in France, Italy, Germany, Canada and United States.
