Davide Sorrenti

The Sorrentis moved to New York in the early 1980s, partly because Davide had thalassemia (or Cooley's anemia, a hereditary form of anemia), 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 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. Read Less

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 and Matsuda.

Davide’s girlfriend at the time, fashion model Jamie (a.k.a. James) King, had been the subject of a cover story in The New York Times Magazine, 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, Sid Vicious, and Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead. Read Less