For the cover image of his book, legendary lensman Sante D’Orazio collaborated with famed artist Richard Prince – who had appropriated a legendary Garry Gross image of a young Brooke Shields standing in a tub in the 1980s. “He asked me if I knew Brooke and if I’d put together a shooting to simulate that image, but with a motorcycle instead of the tub,” D’Orazio told The Daily Beast. But why did he choose this image for the cover? “It’s a combination of things. I’ve known Brooke a long time. It’s one of my favorite pictures and it’s an iconographic image of Americana and a celebrity.”
Images in this gallery are selected from
Sante D’Orazio, Barely Private, by Sante D’Orazio and Ed Ruscha and published by Taschen.
D’Orazio shot these images of actress Eva Mendes for Maxim magazine, though they were never used in the publication. “Truthfully, the reason why they weren’t used was probably because they didn’t show enough skin. I’ll do nudes on my own, but for magazines I try not to compromise the subject in any way. In Eva Mendes’ case, I wasn’t about to go any further than that with her.”
Helmut Newton and D’Orazio pose at a party thrown by Italian Vogue for Newton’s birthday in Monte Carlo in 2000. “He’s a hero of mine,” D’Orazio said. “He was living in LA in the winters and I was always staying in the same hotel. I had always been a fan of his, and I started collecting his work as early as 1984. So when I knew he was there, I called someone up who knew him and got an introduction. Then whenever we knew the other was around, we’d go to each others exhibitions.”
Two years ago, D’Orazio was asked to take part in a photography festival in Orvieto, Italy. He was told he’d be one of two speakers—the other being legendary photographer Robert Frank. “I thought it had gotten confused in translation, but said I’d go anyway. Then it ended up really being him,” he recalled. So what do two famed photographers talk about? “You don’t really sit around and talk shop,” he said. “It’s more or less personal stories, rather than about photography itself.”
D’Orazio shot this image for Purple magazine—and said posing Damien Hirst and Jay-Z through a shark tank was an “obvious” thing. “Damien is known for his formaldehyde shark tanks and formaldehyde is clear, so I thought it would be cool.”
D’Orazio often takes pictures of his son, Nick. This particular image was shot on D’Orazio’s fire escape in New York City. “When I was a kid in the sixties, there was that whole thing about motorcycle looks—pompadour hair and muscle cars. And some relative would always take a picture of a kid with a cigarette in his mouth. So I just repeated what I grew up with.” Nick, now 15, has become accustomed to posing for his dad. “I guess if your father has a camera in his hands all the time, you might as well pose, because I’m going to take the picture anyway,” D’Orazio said, laughing.
Naomi Campell showed up for this photo shoot at 3:00 PM—even though her call time was 9:30 a.m. “That’s very typical of Naomi,” D’Orazio said. “I don’t think she’s ever been on time in her life.” So how can she get away with the bad behavior? “Supply and demand. If you’re a very beautiful black girl like Naomi who can move and dance and who has that kind of energy… there’s not many around.”
Sophia Loren insisted upon doing her own hair and makeup for this photo, taken at Giorgio Armani’s home in Italy. “She knows her look and she wants to keep it,” the photographer said. D’Orazio had a 103 degree fever on the day of the shoot with Loren, but showed up because he didn’t want to cancel. “She saw I was sick and got me soup and was being an Italian mama. It was very sweet.”
Since 1982, D’Orazio has kept a stack of accordion-like journals documenting his adventures—like this evening at a Miami-Basel art fair—locked up in a safe. “I’ve kept 27 years worth of visual diaries,” he said. “Even if there wasn’t a picture, maybe there was a label from a wine bottle, or matches from the Beverly Hills Hotel. I’d come home at the end of every day and write for 15 minutes and then just move on.”
D’Orazio chose supermodel Diana Kamalova for a photo shoot in Italian Glamour because he thought she had that “pretty baby look.” “It’s an aesthetic thing—you choose whoever inspires you at the moment to be your muse.” And how many muses has he had over the years? “Oh, I’ve had a number,” he said with a laugh.
During his trip to Mexico City for one of his exhibitions, D’Orazio documented his travels by snapping images of the local architecture and ruins. He also snapped an image of himself in a mirror—something that has become common practice for the photographer over the years. “Historically, artists have always done self-portraits and that’s my version—my way of including myself,” he said. “When you carry a camera around, you even have one with you when you’re coming out of the tub naked.”
This image of actress Penelope Cruz was originally taken for Italian Vogue and later included in a Los Angeles exhibition. D’Orazio says he prefers not to pose his subjects—so he let Cruz’s bangs fall into her eyes for this shot. “A lot of times you don’t really choose things, you find them,” he said. “Like somebody is sitting there and you like it, you respond, you take the picture, and you don’t really pre-conceive the thing. I do very little staging.”
D’Orazio asked Pamela Anderson to do a series of nudes for Paradise magazine in which he was meant to explore a subject he knew well. He knew Anderson well after shooting her for Playboy magazine in 2000. “So I just called her up and said listen, I wanna do a series of nudes—are you into it? And she said absolutely. She had no hesitation about taking her clothes off.”
D’Orazio and Anderson pose together in a mirror at the Chateau Marmont, the photographer’s favorite hotel in Los Angeles. “I have always stayed there. It’s the closest thing to New York in L.A. It’s like a pre-war building in New York.”
D’Orazio has known actor Mickey Rourke for nearly 20 years—so when the actor called him up to shoot some photographs to help promote his film The Wrestler, D’Orazio obliged. “We did those at 5 o’clock in the morning for half and hour and then went back and went to bed,” he recalled. Mickey reverted to his signature pose—one hand tucked in his pants. “It’s just a typical guy pose. If you walk in on a guy watching TV on the couch, most likely, he’s got his hands down his pants,” D’Orazio said. “Right now I’m on the couch and I’ve got one hand in my pants. I’m not holding my crotch or anything, though.”
This image of supermodel Heidi Klum was never published, D’Orazio said. “I like to get pictures that were never published because they’re usually my favorite. I’d say 60 percent of my favorites never make it into the magazine. It’s just my taste versus a group of people.”
“Richard’s work had to do with Americana in the low-brow sense,” D’Orazio said of collaborating with Richard Prince on the Brooke Shields series. “Basketball courts and car hoods and things like that, so this sort of resembled the motorcyclist part of his series of girlfriends,” D’Orazio said.
D’Orazio told celebrity DJ Sky Nellor she should pose for him because “her body was rockin’” at the time, and “you’re only rockin’ for a certain period of time in your life.” The photographer says that when he asks to take friends’ pictures, they’re typically flattered. “You end up being documented for posterity, and when you get older and you’ve got grandkids, you can show them how great you looked.”
Throughout D’Orazio’s long career, he has forged close relationships with a number of models, including Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell. “In a sense, the relationship I had with them was like one you’d have with anyone at the office,” he said. “You go to school, there’s a group of girls that you like or you don’t like, and you go to work with them.” Still, D’Orazio said he never let hanging with supermodels and his glamorous lifestyle get to his head. “You live your life and you think it’s normal,” he said. “I don’t really go around thinking I’m all this or that. I’d like to think that it’s the quality of my work that gains the respect of these people, and that my personality has something to do with it, too. Nobody wants to hang out with a dickhead.”
Sante D'Orazio / Taschen
