Fashion In The Fast Lane ! Uncensored and provocative shots of models and artists.
A decade after his sizzling debut A Private View, Sante D'Orazio returns with a second volume of photo-diary-scrapbook, covering 1997 to 2008. Uncensored and provocative, D'Orazio's shots are mounted in collage-style entries framed with candid, handwritten observations. All-night parties and day-long photo sessions provide the light and shade of D'Orazio's jetset lifestyle—celebrities, models, musicians, actors and artists all feature, in various states of dress and undress. Included here are Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Diane Kruger, Tricia Helfer, Stephanie Seymour, Liz Hurley, Jay-Z, Mickey Rourke, Angelina Jolie, Christina Aguilera, Pam Anderson, Keith Richards, Axl Rose, Damien Hirst, Julian Schnabel and many more. Informal images contrast with posed shots, color with black and white, and outtakes are shown along published photos from the likes of Playboy and Interview. With a keen eye, this New York-based photographer creates a dynamic tableau of moods and styles. Access to this demi-monde is rare; capturing its essence in words and pictures, rarer still. Sante D'Orazio succeeds on both counts.
How did you start in fashion photography?
SANTE D'ORAZIO: I got into photography because this man who lived around the corner taught me, so I never went to school for it. I had painted most of my life and I was studying fine arts. When I graduated from university I needed a job and happened to get one as a second assistant to somebody who was doing fashion work. So, it was - you know - by chance that I started to do fashion. I just cleaned dishes and mopped floors thinking, all along, that I was gonna still paint. And three years later I had my first Vogue cover.
Have you always been doing journals like this?
I've been doing them since '81. I was in Milan and somebody gave me a Trussardi diary and I thought "Genius." Inside I put the Polaroids, how much film I shot, who I shot with. This way for billing later on I had all the information.
So it's almost for your own record?
Yeah, and every day became a note because I either edited that day or shot that day or met so-and-so. It developed out of necessity, and then it became total addiction and habit.
What defines a good photograph?
A good photograph, basically, is an image that has a certain kind of spirit. You take an inanimate object like a piece of paper, put an image on it and it becomes alive. It has an essence, a spirit. You feel it and you respond to it immediately, and it’s that essence that makes it a work of art... or not.
Did you always have this book in mind after A Private View?
You know, after the first book I had 10 times the material still left from the first one. I don't want to repeat myself but 12 years later you just say, "Fuck, yeah." That's why the first one's called A Private View and this one's called Barely Private because I exposed even more.
Then there are those quiet moments with Larry Gagosian in a mask. It's one of those photos you never think you'd see.
[LAUGHS] He still doesn't know it happened. I'll be getting phone calls. I don't give a fuck. You only live once, we're all going, and I'm going to leave a record.
Is there a theme you're trying to hit?
There's no theme, it's life. I barely remember a night, but then I do when I look back at the Polaroids. "Did I do that? I did. Oh shit, I'm glad, I wish I could remember." It's a self-portrait. If you could remember all the moments in the last 10 years you'd highlight this one, this one and this one. Same thing.
Was there anything you had to cut that you regret?
There are a few. With my son, Nick. You got to get to a point in life where you really don't care anymore: Everything gets contrived when you care too much. One of my dearest friends is Peter Beard, and I don't want to hang out with him because he's crazier than anyone I know Peter's so out of control but his diaries are the most genius because you see how little he cares and how in the carelessness there's genius.
Look, when Nick was three years old I drove him over to Peter's house in Montauk, and on the way over I said, "What the fuck am I doing bringing my three year old to Peter's?" He's liable to drop him off the cliff or something. We went there and Peter was happy to see us. He had a beer in his hand, but he couldn't find an opener so he smashed it against the table and started drinking. Then he grabs Nick by the side to take him for a walk, and the bottle cuts my son's eye. And I just thought how much shit I was going to get for this. But I got the pictures.
From among all the famous people you have photographed, who – off the top of your head – might you say has impressed you the most?
Hum, you know, I love John Travolta. But what impresses me about anyone of the stars I have worked with, is that they are super famous - well known - and yet, when you meet them, they are very humble and down-to-earth. The mere fact that they’re loving, that they’re caring is what impresses me the most.
After all these years of knowing and meeting famous people are you still impressed by that fact?
Yes, I am impressed with anybody who’s got a loving nature and I appreciate that in any human being, and if I don’t meet-up with that, I am not impressed with his or her celebrityhood. If people are rude, I’ll leave. I have no problems leaving.
You feel the physical presence of the person there, be it a man or a woman.
That is my forte. That’s what I think I do best. I am able to get that out of people. I am able to see it and find it and then extract it out of my subject. I don’t know why, or how, but I manage to do it.
Chemistry?
Yes, it’s all chemistry.
About the photographer
Sante D’Orazio (Born January 23, 1956) in Brooklyn, New York, studied painting and fine arts at Brooklyn College. He worked as assistant to Phillip Pearlstein. During those same years, he also studied photography with Lou Bernstein, a member of The New York Photo League. He began his professional career in 1981 with Italian Vogue and later at Andy Warhol's Interview and was soon working for the world’s leading fashion magazines and commercial clients. D’Orazio presented an alluring combination of sex and celebrity: a world populated by beautiful Supermodels (in various stages of undress), megawatt actresses like Angelina Jolie or Sharon Stone casually lounging on a sofa or by the sea, shirtless rock stars like Axl Rose and hyperbolic bombshells like Pamela Anderson. Through D’Orazio’s lens, modern celebrities became mythological beings, reflecting the values of our idol -obsessed times: Eternal Youth. Naked Beauty. Rock ‘n’ Roll. In a career spanning over twenty years, D’Orazio documented The Glamorous Life — always with a wink from behind the camera — for some of the world’s greatest publications, beginning with Italian Vogue in 1981 and including Interview, Vanity Fair,GQ, French, British and German Vogue. Sante D’Orazio has exhibited widely in museums and galleries internationally, including the Kunsthaus Munich, Kunsthauswien Vienna, the L.A. County Museum, Stellan Holm Gallery (New York), Cameraworks Gallery (Berlin) Hilario Galguera Gallery (Mexico City) and NRW Forum in Düsseldorf.. His publications include: A Private View (Penguin Books, 1998), Sante D’Orazio Photographs (Arena Editions, 2002) Pam: American Icon (Schirmer/Mosel, 2007), Katlick School (TeNeues 2006, Gianni and Donatella (TeNeues, 2007) and “Barely Private (Taschen 2009.)
