Valerio Polici is a freelance photographer. He was born in Rome in 1984 where he is currently based.
2006_2009 Marketing and advertising LUMSA university in Rome, one year exchange studies in Lisbon at I.S.C.E.M. university, three months at Z-Publicidade advertising agency
2009-2013 Photograhy at I.S.F.C.I. school in Rome, Reportage workshop at I.S.F.C.I and Exusphoto, Advanced masterclass with Enrico Bossan (head of photography department in Fabrica) in Padova. Worshop with Paolo Pellegrin at Macro Museum.
Worked with several italian newspapers (focusing mostly on social topic). Featured on British Journal of Photography, Goodfellas Magazine, FK Magazine.
Becoming an adult, it is a complex process. The responsibility, the renunciations, the loss of the wonder are not always easy to accept. Terrorized from this transition some kids decide to stop for a while in a halfway stage, before that the carelessness will vanish forever. I decided to tell this suspension through the community of the graffiti writers, that in this activity they find the perfect tool for such evasion. In the obsessive research of a momentary freedom, they got catapulted in this limbo populated by myths legends and heroic deeds, where often they remained locked for the entire life.
The graffiti sub-culture, born in the New York ghettos during the years of the Warhol’s prophecy of the “15 minutes of fame for all”, was the expression of the sense of inadequacy and depersonalization, that groups of persons felt in a society that would have never perceived them. Therefore they tried to chase that fame, writing their invisible stories on all urban surfaces, to shout their existence out into the world.
Almost half century later, this “movement” infected all the western world, taking roots on several social net. Not anymore a tool of expression just for the less fortunate social classes, but an occasion for everybody to rebuilt their own identity, although in a parallel world, free from the personal limitations.
The appeal of being outlaw, the obstacles, and the theatricality of the location where their “missions” take place, make their life appear as those of modern knight errant, in a constant request of new adventures.
In the last two years i followed several groups of graffiti writers between Europe and Argentina.
Among intrusions, climbing, and a lots of adrenaline, this is the story of their escape and to a certain extent also about mine.
