Gray Sorrenti on the Magic of Spanish Summer Holidays

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Gray Sorrenti in Ray-Ban opticalsPhotography by Fumi Nagasaka, Styling by Elizabeth Fraser-Bell

The fledgling photographer reflects on the timeless magic of trips to Majorca, complete with paella and the Velvet Underground

“The spot I go to in the summer called Deia is the most magical place. It’s in Spain, Majorca and my family has a house there. We have these little casitas that we stay in. When you’re there it’s like there’s no time – time does not exist. There’s an age difference between everyone, but everyone’s hanging out with everyone anyway. We go to different beaches where you have to hike down to the water onto these big boulders. You dip into the water straight from the rocks. You can jump from really high! We’ll have a bunch of friends, play guitar, and make a paella on the rocks while the sunset’s going down. My family is my everything. When I was younger, I just used to sit down with my mum and sculpt and we would make these crazy things, and I would paint with my dad. We would be in our garden painting and listening to Velvet Underground… they’re my best friends, I couldn’t live without them.”

Young photographer Gray Sorrenti has grown up embedded in visual culture – after all, her father is Mario Sorrenti, and by age 15 she had published her first editorial in zine Moodboard, capturing the lives of three of her teenage friends in New York. “I photograph my friends and the people around me,” she says, "When (someone) is in their natural state, that’s more beautiful.” A part of the new generation of creatives determined to challenge the status quo, and championed as one of the subversive faces of Luxottica's Class of 2016 project, her's is an attitude and aesthetic that is resolutely modern in its dedication to both artistic and political freedom. “This generation really knows what’s going on,” she says of her peers. “They give me hope.”