Daria Addabbo

Daria Addabbo (Rome, 1979) is an Italian photographer whose work looks at the United States through documentary photography and the language of the photo novel. She lives and works in Rome and has more than fifteen years of professional experience. For nearly a decade she has been creating photo novels, encouraged and mentored by photo editor Marco Finazzi.

Her work has appeared in publications including L’Espresso, D–la Repubblica, Internazionale, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, The Washington Post, GQ, Grazia, and El País, among many others.

In 2015 she produced The First Step of Tom Joad, a photographic project retracing the journey of the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, exhibited at the US Embassy in Rome. Her long-term project Profondo familiare was exhibited at the International Photography Festival of Porto Alegre in Brazil and at Festival de la Luz in Buenos Aires.

She has received Honorable Mentions at the International Photography Awards and has been selected for American Photography, both twice consecutively.

Between 2019 and 2020 she published three books with Jaca Book: This Hard Land. Sulle strade di Springsteen, Un altro giorno è andato, and Acque d’America. In recent years she has focused on the theme of water in the American West.

From December 2024 to February 2025 she completed a two-month artistic residency in the United States sponsored by Princeton University. The research developed during this period emerged from a dialogue with sociologist Mitchell Duneier, Chair of the Department of Sociology at Princeton, around the idea that Bruce Springsteen’s songs can be read as a sociological map of the United States. This perspective continues to inform Addabbo’s photographic research on the United States.