In a more than 30-year career, Sante D’Orazio has photographed supermodels such as Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Heidi Klum and Naomi Campbell, as well as pop culture icons like Drew Barrymore, Keanu Reeves, Pamela Anderson and Janet Jackson. Now he is giving readers an inside look at his provocative work in a new book entitled, “A Shot in the Dark,” which comes out Sept. 23 from Blackstone Publishing.
In the book, the 69-year-old D’Orazio tells how he fought his way to the top while navigating a life of sex, drugs, hustlers and panic attacks. He weaves together a vivid story of the Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he grew up, raised by both an immigrant community and his artistic immigrant mother who helped inspire his own creative pursuits. The book often details in a humorous way how his upbringing affected his many relationships — both romantically and professionally.
“I came into writing my memoir by way of obstacles,” D’Orazio said. “The type that life throws at you in the most unexpected times. When spine and knee surgeries made creating my work impossible, I found myself sitting and laying around, forgetting what a natural storyteller I was while entertaining my friends my entire life.”
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D’Orazio said he began by writing short stories with pen to paper, filling them away loosely in a box, and a year later, he discovered it was his memoir.
The book became the story of his life in the arts and the healing it brought to him “because not everything is as rosy as it appears. It’s that contrast that makes for great dynamics in every art form, but, most of all, in our lives,” D’Orazio said.
