Tria first picked up a camera at age eight, while growing up in the Virgin Islands. A New York City photographer for more than 25 years, she has successfully pursued both commercial shooting and personal long-term projects, creating a diverse, exciting, and prolific career.
Tria specializes in interiors, still life, food, travel, and people. From magazine assignments (Architectural Digest, Coastal Living, Esquire, ESPN Sports, Hampton Cottages & Gardens, House Beautiful, Islands, Travel & Leisure, Vanity Fair and Veranda, among others) to catalog and advertising clients (Pottery Barn, The Company Store, Frontgate. Ross Simon, Harp Beer, and Tiffany & Co.) she has photographed everything from tropical resorts, to diamond jewelry, to Hampton’s artists and their studios, and in such far- reaching places as the Louvre in Paris to McSorely’s Ale House in New York City. The principal photographer on several books (Island Hopping, Vendome Press 2018, OUT EAST: House and Gardens of the Hamptons, Vendome Press 2017, Fifth Avenue Style: A Designer's New York Apartment, Vendome Press 2013, Age of Elegance-Interiors-Alex Papachristidis Rizzoli 2012, and Domestic Art-Curated Interiors-Holly Moore Assouline 2008), she counts many of today’s top interior designers as collaborators and clients.
Whether photographing violin makers in Cremona Italy, Cindy Sherman on her front porch in Sag Harbor, NY, or the mid-century Phillip Johnson/De Menil residence in Houston, TX, Tria’s sensitivity to her subjects and surroundings is evident in the relaxed and organic interaction that occurs on her shoots. With her experience comes a mastery of the craft, a command of light and composition, and an attunement to defining detail that informs her work whether she is photographing people, places, or things.
Tria’s personal work has been defined by comprehensive, timely, and in-depth subject exploration, culminating in three monographs of her work. Cuba The Elusive Island, published by Harry N. Abrams in 1996 brought together 100 images along with a selection of writings by some of Cuba’s most important writers. In 2012 Damiani published Sand Sea Sky: The Beaches of Sagaponack. The 63 images selected from a 10,000-image project reveal the complex visual embodiment of the artist’s decade-long meditations on nature’s transient fragility. In October 2017, Damiani published The Cuba Archive, a selection of 125 images from the 25,000 taken during 12 one-month trips from 1990-1996. Photographs from the series, as well as work commissioned by the Annenberg, were featured in Cuba Is (2017-18), at the Annenberg Space for Photography.
Her work has shown in New York City, Athens, Greece, Paris, France, Hyderabad, India, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, California, Chicago, Illinois, and Havana, Cuba, and is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Parrish Art Museum, The Jewish Museum, and The NY Public Library, all in New York.