Davide Sorrenti - ArgueSKE 1994-1997 - Idea 2019

Davide Sorrenti, the New York photographer who died in 1997, at age 20, was, says his friend Lola Schnabel, “living in truth.” His mother, photographer Francesca Sorrenti, with London’s Idea Books, published Davide Sorrenti ArgueSKE 1994 – 1997, a retrospective of her son’s work.

Naturalistic, authentic, and compelling, the images of Frankie Rayder, Milla Jovovich, Carolyn Murphy, and his girlfriend Jaime King, whom he was shooting editorially for the likes of Interview and Detour magazines, reflect the ’90s New York Sorrenti was living in. It was a city still in the shadows of a decimating 1987 recession and pulsing with rap, grunge, and skateboarding—cultures he knew intimately.

Sorrenti had his own shadows to deal with. He had a hereditary blood condition, thalassemia, and used heroin in the last year or so of his life. His death due to kidney failure was co-opted into the narrative around heroin chic, and fashion’s troubling flirtation with vacant-eyed models in less than salubrious settings, images which often referenced documentarians like Larry Clark or Nan Goldin.
1st edition

176p - EN - 30,4x27,9cm - cloth hardcover with dust jacket - very good condition but small bump on top right corner