Her passion for photography Valérie-Anne Giscard d’Estaing received from her grandparents. Her maternal Grandfather shot with a Rolleiflex, her paternal Grandfather with glass plates. To this favorable family environment was added a darkroom in one of the bathrooms. She was ten years old. A few years later she realized that her capacities fell short of her dreams. She would not become a photographer but would remain in the world of photography.
In 1974 she started working for the French Ministry of Culture of which Michel Guy was in charge, who did the most to help and promote photography: Arles, the Photography Foundation entrusted to Pierre de Fenoyl…
She then became in charge of Hachette illustrated books. The 2000s were the beginning of drastic changes of unsuspected scale. Getty and Corbis swallowed all the photos agencies. Valérie-Anne Giscard d’Estaing saved three of them: the Societé Française de Photographie, the Napoleon Foundation and the Museum of Freemasonry. About the same time, a mythical Paris Match photographer Benno Graziani gave her his archives.
She really got into it, picked up the challenge and opened her gallery, Photo 12Galerie, in the street the Jardin de St Paul, in Paris, a stone throw from the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. In the last few years, she has shared her time with Los Angeles. Why? Because it is still an emerging city, a place with another way of seeing the world, that pushes you to always question yourself. To Los Angeles was added Photo Shanghai four years ago. A happenstance, a bet at the beginning that was transformed into success. Three consecutive exhibitions where everything exposed was sold.
Jean Jacques Naudet
