valeria farinella
born in messina, italy ~ 1988
graduated in photography at ied milan ~ 2009
moved to london ~ 2014
founded unreality check ~ 2018
moved to tokyo ~ 2024

interested in photography and writing, started out my career as a fashion photographer because i thought being an artist and a writer was impossible.
turns out that being a fashion photographer was also kind of impossible, simply because i just liked fashion photography but had no interest in being a fashion photographer myself nor in working in the fashion world.

i started working in high-end retouching as a side hustle to support my photography and writing but i had a lot of work and so i founded unreality check ltd, a retouching studio in london. the 'a lot of work' part became my daily reality for the next five years. i burned out a few times, had less and less time and energy to take photos and write. i decided to change that and i have been going through my photography and writing archives. i have been organising, reviewing, deleting, reworking, decluttering, rethinking.

funnily enough, my retouching and postproduction experience has been helping immensely to refine and rework the grading and colours of many projects from my archive. after all, everything happens for a reason. and even if it doesn't, connecting the dots of all the things i have done so far helps me mourn the past 10+ years of mostly not having time for what really mattered to me.