PHOTOGRAPHY

Edita Vilkeviciute. Lara Stone

ADORING MUSES
THE 2012 PIRELLI CALENDAR SEES FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER MARIO SORRENTI REVISIT THE EARLY INFLUENCES THAT SHAPED HIS CAREER
TEXT JACKIE BISCHOF IN NEW YORK

AS A YOUNG MAN, MARIO SORRENTI, PHOTOGRAPHER for the 2012 Pirelli Calendar who first shot to fame in the early 1990s for his stripped-down photographs of a young, naked Kate Moss in the Calvin Klein Obsession adverts, was set against becoming a fashion photographer. Sitting in his studio on the fourth floor of a converted warehouse on the border between the trendy art district of Soho and the chaotic streets of Chinatown in Manhattan, Sorrenti is musing over how, as a student of art and sculpture in New York City, he was an idealist about what constituted art, and was unimpressed with commercial fashion and catalogue shoots. The world of fashion that I had been exposed to up to that point was very commercial. It was something that I had no interest in. But at dinner one night, friends studying photography showed him how to print pictures in their darkroom. Soon he became obsessed with the creative aspect of printing and its results. He began reading photography books profiling the work of American fashion photographers such as Bruce Weber and Irving Penn, and I started recognising that there was incredible art in their photography, he says. A stint modelling at times in the nude also put him in contact with some of the photographers he so admired, people he found bigger than life and who inspired him to see artistic elements in commercial fashion photography.

Since moving to London in his late teens and doing his first shoot for the alternative magazine The Face at age 20, Sorrenti has become one of the fashion industrys most sought after photographers, his fame in part a result of his bare black and white nude spreads. For the 2012 Pirelli Calendar he has returned to his earlier inspirations, a move that has been feted by the fashion industry and Pirelli devotees, but not necessarily by the public. Born in Naples in 1971, Sorrenti moved to New York at the age of 10 with his parents and two siblings. Sorrentis mother was a successful fashion photographer and his father an artist. Fluent in Italian, he speaks with a lilt in his voice which is slightly hoarse on the day we meet, the result of conducting several hours of interviews. The work of some of the fashion photographers who changed the trajectory of Sorrentis career fill a floor-length glass bookcase resting against one of his studio walls. His studio is neatly compartmentalised and quiet, insulated from the buzzing streets below. A black leather lounge set and glass table give visitors the opportunity to peruse the dozens

I made a very conscious choice to do exactly the opposite of that not to be provocative and sexy but to try and be emotive and evocative
28 FEBRUARY 2012 WANTED