- February 4, 1997 New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, USA) was a fashion photographer, son of photographer and advertiser Francesca Sorrenti; and brother of Mario Sorrenti

Mario Sorrenti

Mario Sorrenti is a photographer and director best known for his spreads of nude models in the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar....

 (b. 1971), and Vanina Sorrenti (b. 1973) also fashion photographers.

Rise to fame

Davide Sorrenti was born 1976 in Naples, Italy, in a family of talented photographers (unofficially they have become known as the Corleones of fashion photography); his mother Francesca Sorrenti, renowned fashion photographer, as well as his five year older brother Mario; and his sister Vanina, first a stylist, then (after his death) also proved to be a talented photographer.

The Sorrentis moved to New York in the early 1980s, partly because Davide had thalassemia

Thalassemia

Thalassemia is an inherited autosomal recessive blood disease that originated in the Mediterranean region. In thalassemia the genetic defect, which could be either mutation or deletion, results in reduced rate of synthesis or no synthesis of one of the globin chains that make up hemoglobin...

 (or Cooley's anemia, a hereditary form of anemia

Anemia

Anemia is a decrease in number of red blood cells or less than the normal quantity of hemoglobin in the blood. However, it can include decreased oxygen-binding ability of each hemoglobin molecule due to deformity or lack in numerical development as in some other types of hemoglobin...

), and needed regular blood transfusions and medical care; a burden that is believed to at least partially have caused him to take comfort in drugs. The disease made him look several years younger than his real age. His brother Mario documented his sufferings one of many nights, published in the book The machine; referring to the drug infusion pump that Davide was hooked up to.

Growing up in a cultivated environment, Davide painted, played golf and liked opera, but he soon also became a “prep-school

University-preparatory school

A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school is a secondary school, usually private, designed to prepare students for a college or university education...

 gangster”; private-school students living a wannabee gangster’s life, with shoplifting, credit-card scams and drug dealing as a way of gaining status. He also started the crew SKE, with fellow skateboarders and graffiti artists (Davide’s tag was Argue); with whom he formed a rap group called the Mosaics, because of their wide mix of ethnicities; and started the streetwear label Danücht.

Davide began documenting his friends in their everyday actions at the age of 18, developing his own distinctive personal style and sense of fashion. Around age 19, his darkly glamorous photos appeared in magazines like Interview

Interview (magazine)

Interview is an American magazine which has the nickname The Crystal Ball Of Pop. It was founded in late 1969 by artist Andy Warhol. The magazine features intimate conversations between some of the world's biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers...

, Detour, and Ray Gun

Ray Gun (magazine)

Ray Gun was an American alternative rock-and-roll magazine, first published in 1992 in Santa Monica, California. Led by founding art director David Carson, Ray Gun explored experimental magazine typographic design. The result was a chaotic, abstract style, not always readable, but distinctive in...

. With his talent, charm, and juvenile good looks, he quickly became New York’s fashion Wunderkind, boosting the heroin chic

Heroin chic

Heroin chic was a look popularized in mid-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and jutting bones.The look, which promoted emaciated features and androgyny, was an alternative that stood in direct contradiction to the "healthy" and vibrant look of models...

-trend with young skinny waif-models appearing as drug addicts. A promising member of Generation X, Sorrenti was known for his photographs of seemingly strung-out models in stupor-like poses that, some felt, emulated the blank look of the heroin addict and glamorized drug use. Based on reports from the BBC’s Online, Sorrenti fell in love with teenage model Jaime (James) King

Jaime King

Jaime King is an American actress and model. In her modeling career and early film roles, she used the names Jamie King and James King, which was a childhood nickname given to King by her parents, because her agency already represented another Jaime — the older, then more famous model Jaime...

, herself a heroin addict, and Sorrenti quickly stepped into the void of substance abuse. Vulnerable due to his thalassemia, and a lethal injection of a quantity “not normally considered unusual,” Sorrenti was dead within six months.

Heroin Chic

Inspired by the real-life subjects of the photojournalism of Larry Clark

Larry Clark

Lawrence Donald "Larry" Clark is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for the movie Kids and his photography book Tulsa...

 in the 1960s and Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin

Nancy "Nan" Goldin is an American photographer.-Life and work:Goldin was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburb of Lexington, to middle class Jewish parents whose ideas, moderately liberal and progressive, were put to the test when on April 12, 1965 their eldest...

 in the 1970s, photographers like Juergen Teller

Juergen Teller

Juergen Teller is an artist and fashion photographer.-Life and career:Teller studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich, Germany...

, Craig McDean

Craig McDean

Craig McDean is a British fashion photographer originally from Middlewich near Manchester, but now based in New York City....

, David Sims

David Sims

David Sims is a former professional American football player who played running back for three seasons for the Seattle Seahawks. He led the National Football League in touchdowns in 1978 with 15, but suffered a career-ended injury early the next season...

 and Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson

Terrence "Terry" Richardson is an American fashion photographer.-Early life:Richardson was born in New York City, the son of Bob Richardson, a fashion photographer who struggled with schizophrenia and drug abuse...

 reacted against the “phony and over-retouched” aesthetics of 1980s glamour, introducing what they thought were a more truthful approach to reality in the early 1990s. Having started as an underground trend, the approach soon went mainstream when more commercial photographers started copying the style, and with the long running campaign of Calvin Klein

Calvin Klein

Calvin Richard Klein is an American fashion designer who launched the company that would later become Calvin Klein Inc. in 1968. In addition to clothing, Klein has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewelry....

 featuring models like Kate Moss

Kate Moss

Kate Moss is an English model. Moss is known for her waifish figure and popularising the heroin chic look in the 1990s. She is also known for her controversial private life, high profile relationships, party lifestyle, and drug use. Moss changed the look of modelling and started a global debate on...

 and Vincent Gallo

Vincent Gallo

Vincent Gallo is an Italian-American film director and actor. Though he has had minor roles in mainstream films such as Goodfellas, he is most associated with independent movies, including Buffalo '66, which he wrote, directed, did the music for and starred in; The Brown Bunny, which he also...

.

Davide’s career started almost as soon as he learned how to handle a camera in 1994. His mother Francesca recalls that every day was a photo shoot for Davide. He documented everything he and his friends did, making them feel that something big was about to happen. In a series of snapshots published in Interview 1996, his friends from SKE are portrayed hanging out in a run-down apartment, watching TV and smoking pot. His photos also got published in magazines like Detour, Surface, Ray Gun and i-D, all of them proponents of heroin chic, and shot campaign photos for the Japanese fashion companies Hysteric Glamour

Hysteric glamour

Hysteric Glamour is a Japanese designer label created by artist Nobuhiko Kitamura in 1984. The theme of the label is 1960s mass media, with T-shirts featuring pictures of famous musicians like Marc Bolan and the Sex Pistols, and art work by Andy Warhol. Other themes include comics, pornography,...

 and Matsuda

Matsuda

is a Japanese family name.-People with the family name:*Iwao Matsuda, a member of the Japanese Diet*Jeff Matsuda, animator for Jackie Chan Adventures and The Batman*Jujiro Matsuda, founder of Mazda*Mari Matsuda, American law school professor...

.

Davide’s girlfriend at the time, fashion model Jamie (a.k.a. James) King

Jaime King

Jaime King is an American actress and model. In her modeling career and early film roles, she used the names Jamie King and James King, which was a childhood nickname given to King by her parents, because her agency already represented another Jaime — the older, then more famous model Jaime...

, had been the subject of a cover story in The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...

, where she admitted getting involved in drugs when she started modelling at age 14. One of Davide’s photos shows a young, skinny Jamie lying on a bed, with torn clothes surrounded with photos of famous drug casualties like Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain

Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...

, Sid Vicious

Sid Vicious

Sid Vicious was an English musician best known as the bassist of the influential punk rock group Sex Pistols...

, and Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

 of Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

.

Death and aftermath

On February 4, 1997, Davide died of a kidney ailment, possibly caused by a combination of his illness and his excessive heroin use at his friend’s apartment in Manhattan, although autopsies were incomplete.

As a reaction to her son’s death, Francesca Sorrenti started a campaign against the glamourization of drug addiction and underage models, demanding magazine editors to take responsibility. “Heroin chic isn't what we're projecting. It's what we are. Our business has become heroin chic. Someone taking pictures of that magnitude has to have experienced hard drugs”, Ms. Sorrenti stated in The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

.

Matt Jones, photographer and son of i-D

I-D

i-D is a British magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and youth culture. i-D was founded by designer and former Vogue art director Terry Jones in 1980. The first issue was published in the form of a hand-stapled fanzine with text produced on a typewriter...

 editor Terry Jones, said of his friend Davide: “I guess he did slightly see the glamorous side. He also saw the real side of it. And he glamorized it himself, which is the sad thing. It was a whole circle. He glamorized it, and got caught up in it a bit.”

In May 1997, President Clinton denounced the American fashion industry for cynically abusing teenagers and helping spread heroin usage to a new and younger group of people. “Some fashion leaders are admitting flat-out that images projected in fashion photos in the last few years have made heroin addiction seem glamorous and sexy and cool," President Clinton stated. “And as some of the people in those images start to die now, it's become obvious that is not true. The glorification of heroin is not creative, it's destructive. It's not beautiful, it is ugly. And this is not about art, it's about life and death. And glorifying death is not good for any society."

Davide Sorrenti’s death caused the fashion industry to declare heroin chic improper and passé, and by summer 1997 a new healthy look was introduced on its magazine spreads. Jamie King went to rehabilitation the following year for her addictions to heroin and alcohol.