Alex Geana

Geana was born 1979 in Bucharest, Romania. At age 5 his family immigrated to Southern California where he remained into early adulthood. Upon finishing his secondary education, Geana went into the hotel industry intending on a career in hotel management and hospitality services. It was through the hotel industry that Geana transitioned from California to New York. In New York, Geana became exposed to an art scene that inspired him to leave the hotel trade and focus on developing his interests and talents as a photographer and writer.

Geana began his photographic career largely as an experimental photographer using the medium as a contributor to his work as a writer. By 2007 his skill and work as a photographer took greater prominence and became the center focus of his career. His work in fashion photography became the prime element of his writing for the digital media giant Huffington Post where visual media is the key factor to garnering readership. Much of his current and past photography focuses on fashion, gay culture and portraiture. To date (2013), Geana's best known photographs have been a series of dramatic portraits taken of fashion icon and beer heiress Daphne Guinness.[1] Photographed during a single session, the series of portraits feature Guinness in a gold/platinum lamé dress and jacket with Alexander McQueen's iconic heel-less high heeled shoes. The photographs garnered Geana much attention and were exhibited at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art, the School of Visual Arts and in the Museum at FIT's 2012 exhibit on Guinness, of which his image was used as the cover to the exhibit publication.[2] The Guinness shoot has since spurred Geana's career as a fashion photographer and brought him into greater demand for commercial shoots and editorials. While fashion has remained the center of Geana's photographic work he has continued artistic experiments in photography from 2011 with a series of projects using backlit cut food to create pattern and light effects as an artistic expression.

Geana began his foray into writing in the early 2000s upon meeting retired Bryn Mawr professor [3] Katherine Janowitz an American poet who he has credited with helping him find his voice as a writer. Janowitz produced Geana's first play "Three Tables". The play is a voyeuristic view of the lives of several New Yorkers as seen through their private dinner conversation at three separate restaurant tables.[4] Geana and Janowitz's relationship ended with her sudden death in 2007 at which time Geana also began his association with online news publication and blog Huffington Post.[5] Geana has maintained a popular cultural essay blog for Huffington Post focusing largely on commentary of contemporary cultural issues and fashion from the perspective of gay New Yorkers. While often New York centric, Geana's Californian background does periodically take moments to look at cultural topics from a western and broader American perspective. In 2008 Geana published "Side Step Me' a series of poems and fictional narratives derived from his experience in New York's gay and pill popping culture.[6]

In July 2013 Geana became the first Editorial Director of the new online daily periodical The Blot (magazine). The Blot focuses on a wide array of current events and cultural topics with a more in depth editorial coverage rather than a direct at-the-moment news feeds. His first photo book on Fire Island Pines was published in 2019.

• The Blot
• Alex Geana Photography
• Alex Geana
• Tepper Takayama Fine Arts
• Yale Press, Daphne Guinness