Luca Varano

Luca Varano is a photographer born in New Jersey and based in Los Angeles. He earned his BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he developed a practice grounded in narrative image-making and a deep engagement with queer history. His work often explores the intersection of landscape, identity, and intimacy, using photography to document overlooked narratives and coded spaces.

Through projects like Cruising in the West, Varano examines how queer people claim space and memory within environments shaped by erasure. Drawing on both documentary and constructed methods, his images reflect a quiet tension between absence and presence.

Varano currently lives and works in Los Angeles, where he continues to develop personal work alongside collaborative and commercial project

BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design

Entropy — Red Eye Gallery, 2022

I dream, I Dreamed — Woods-Gerry Gallery, 2023

Tenth of a Second — Machine and Magnet, 2023

Senior Invitational — Woods-Gerry Gallery, 2024

New Contemporary — Gelman Gallery, 2024

Deep Yonder — Red Eye Gallery, 2024

And Photography — Woods-Gerry Gallery, 2024

Love Game — Design Center, 2024

Art of Conservation — U.S. Embassy of Namibia, 2024