Viewing Room – My Beutyfull Lyfe by Davide Sorrenti

Take a seat at our virtual coffee table and enjoy a flip through of My Beutyfull Lyfe by Davide Sorrenti, the third volume of Davide's work released since his early death in 1997.

"Those were the ‘90s...Davide became, despite himself, the poster-child of a certain ‘Heroin chic’ aesthetic that characterized fashion photography in that decade. Politics...accused the fashion system of fueling [a] deadly taste for excess and destruction...of attempting to defend the use of drugs. Many magazines...imputed to Davide part of the responsibility for the introduction of the ‘Heroin chic’ aesthetic in fashion photography. They did so rejoicing in the fact that they had a scapegoat that made things easier and cleansed their conscience."

...

"As a matter of fact, Davide was simply photographing his own life. There was no fabrication to his approach to photography – not even to his life. He was looking at, and portraying, his life and friends. And, even when doing fashion photography, he was not the spectator in somebody else’s world but the participating observer of his own world. His approach to fashion was... akin to that of a documentary photographer... But there was complexity to Davide’s honesty that made his photography so visionary..."

Excerpt from Vogue Italia article published dec 2019
Author Di Alessia Glaviano

A close friend suggested I pick up a copy of the third published volume of the departed Davide Sorrenti's work – My Beutyfull Life. After peeling the plastic away I knew this volume needed a Viewing Room episode.

Davide’s mother Francesca, also an acclaimed fashion photographer, is credited with editing the book. After researching his story, I hesitate to trust the narratives about Davide that circulate– surely it seems he, born into a fashion family, lived a full life until the age of 18, the age he picked up a camera and was suddenly thrust into a system of fashion which had its own idea of what he ought to become. We know and see little of the time before this moment. Davide is not around to share his side of the story; we are left with a few years of widely published images from a young man deeply affected by disease and likely serious addiction, and the memory of him which lives on in his mother. Francesca Sorrenti has fought for many years to reframe the public’s perspective of her son, and I suppose this formally published volume of his work is another effort to convey, through his work, some truth about who David was.

I later came to appreciate her collection greatly. Truly I cannot imagine what toll it must take to engage closely with the art of your departed son.

Though many of the photos included in the book do not chalk among my favorite Sorrenti images, I find plenty of evidence to his previously anonymous influence in my own work throughout.

Curator – Nico Malva
Video, Audio – Noah Glynn

Thank you to Youtube Creator Justin K Prim for his illuminating tutorial about mixing ASMR audio
   / justinkprim