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[imperious music]
[banging]
[microphone rustling]
- What's that thing?
- [Man] I can zoom and see if it's okay.
There's a screen over here, I can see, so I can come in
for a closeup like that or I can pull back a little.
- No, I was talkin' about the thing on my shirt.
- [Man] Well, that's a microphone.
- Oh, all right.
- [Narrator] In that small period of time.
It is a very small period of time.
Wasn't a long, a long history,
it was like a couple of years.
Young people were coming up
and doing things quite extraordinary.
It was a movement.
And Davide was the epitome of all of it.
He felt the culture and was sensitive
to what was going on
and he was able to document it in a picture.
- Like once a year.
I go out to Naples and just hang out with him
and his like, Italian wife.
Just have good food and just hang out
and drive the scooters around.
You ever been-- you've probably been to Italy.
They have those Vespas and like,
all the kids in New York,
everybody gets their car at graduation.
The Italian kids get their Vespas
and you just cruise all around the city
and go in the wrong way out,
like traffic's going this way, you'd go that way.
It's great. [laughs]
- [Narrator] He was definitely aware of what was going on
and how this youth revolution in music, and fashion,
art was so important.
- It's only in that period of time
could someone like Davide have broken through
because now very few magazines
would actually give someone who's 18
the chance to be in their magazine.
It was a true reflection of a youth movement
which people who are older didn't really understand
moral America agitated.
- [Barbara] Tonight we give you a veil look inside
the glamorous world of the fashion industry.
The beautiful images you see can mask an ugly reality.
- [Reporter] Davide Sorrenti was part of a new generation
of fashion photographers.
Some blame the younger photographers for starting the trend,
even some of of Davide Sorrenti's work
reflects drug imagery.
- [Jaime] He made such beautiful work
but the work did have those undertones of melancholy
that people could just project whatever emotions
they wanted on to those images and use his art work.
- [Richard] It got out of control, it was a media frenzy.
- You know, it's totally disgusting
how my brothers name has been like,
totally, you know,
I don't know, he's been totally misunderstood.
- America's so like, I don't know,
kind of brainwashed by all this media.
You know what I mean?
Like, the media has taken over everything.
Like, tomorrow, if the media said something about somebody,
everybody would believe it.
[imperious music]
- I just think that Davide was born under a special star
because it's just so odd that it became so worldwide
and that his-- after his passing,
I looked at his creativity, I looked at his pictures,
I looked at his art and no one could hold a candle
to his work.
Talk about taking your children [chuckles] for granted.
- Okay, check it out.
Get the page, get the page.
You got the page?
This is a spray can, this is the wall,
this is spray paint on wall.
- But he had this-- - That's the A.
- I don't know, this energy.
This ability to draw you toward him.
So yeah, yeah I definitely remember him
because it was the tone of his voice
and it was his vernacular and the things he said.
His way of expressing himself.
You couldn't not want to bend an ear to what the kid
in the room was saying because he was hilarious,
he was charming, and he was right. [laughs]
- There was this air about him that followed him.
You could feel it and that was the magic of him
because he was a street kid
but yet he lived up in the stars and the heavens.
- Davide was the quintessential B-boy.
He tagged, he was a skater and an artist.
You know, he was a really prolific artist.
[melancholic music]
- He had this foe, thug, [laughs] gangster way about him
and the way that he would speak sometimes
but I knew at the core he was just a sweet kid
but yet at the same time he was exposed
to these incredible elite scenarios being on photo shoots
with leading fashion models and working with,
you know, major fashion brands.
- [Woman] Really amazing, actually, to think back.
His family, how powerfully influential they were on him
and on each other.
- [Man] He comes from a pedigree of creative visionaries.
Everybody in the fashion world knows who the Sorrenti's are.
- [Man] And they were a very glamorous group of people.
They were like Kennedys of the downtown style scene.
- We grew up in a little neighborhood
just up on the hills of Naples.
My dad's an artist, he was painting all the time
and my mom was sort of working in fashion
and it was very, very free and very young
and sort of, kind of, like a hippie lifestyle a little bit.
- It's not like America, like,
people actually care about each other in Italy.
you know, like, the people from the windows
are like, yo, what's up?
You're like, hey, how you doing, Mrs. Whatever?
You know and like they all look out for each other,
like, everybody's your mother or your grandmother.
In New York, people are like,
tryin' to kidnap each other's kids and shit. [chuckles]
You're like, what the hell.
- It was very colorful and crazy at the same time
and there was so much love.
And I think that's what kept us so grounded
is that we knew that at the base of everyone's insanity
there was love, you know?
And pain because of Davide's illness.
- Davide had been diagnosed with thalassemia
when he was one.
[slow music]
- It was a horrible disease and children weren't supposed
to live 'till over two, three years old.
I had taken him to the doctor and the doctor had said,
at this point, he's very sick,
you should take him home and have him die in peace.
And he looked so drained and I started to cry.
It was a pretty touch-and-go situation.
He was a normal kid but he suffered a lot.
- He had to go through all sorts of medical procedures,
transfusions every two weeks were extremely painful
and uncomfortable, and the needles.
You know, those things are are really dramatic
when you're little.
- [Mario] I remember taking him to the hospital
when he was really little, with my dad and my mom.
There would be, like, these long hallways
and we would hear kids crying while he got his transfusion,
which would usually take three hours or something like that.
- We would go out and there'd be people dressed in white
and he'd start screaming
because he thought it was, you know, a doctor.
Life wasn't easy for him.
- Every single night he had to put on his machine
for his medication.
Every night he would cry and I would be in bed
and I would say, please, God, let him stop suffering.
And then I guess he got more and more used to it
and became braver and braver and stopped crying.
I remember, I remember when he stopped crying
and he would put it on himself.
I'll never forget, he said, Nina, why is it
that people hurt themselves so much
and I struggle so hard to live?
And he was really young when he said that to me.
Do you know what I mean?
And it, kind of like, I was taken by it
and I was like, whoa, I didn't expect it.
And then I thought, I mean,
that's the way he thought about things.
It was always very deep.
He always saw the core of a situation
or a person and why things were the way they were.
[imperious music]
- We came to New York, I was 10 years old,
Davide was five years old.
When my parents separated,
my mom wanted to come back to New York.
The treatment for his illness
was definitely more advanced here.
It was very hard because we came with nothing.
My mom came with nothing.
- I found a small, very small, one bedroom apartment.
They slept in the bedroom and then I slept
in the living room.
I have to say, my Neapolitan chutzpah,
you know, being strong, being ballsy,
really got me through a lot.
- She was tough, so it's definitely genetic,
like, the whole hustling thing.
She was the big time hustler.
- [Francesca] Since I was a single parent, it's always like
you have to be close, you know, the one thing you have
is family and love.
They were inseparable.
- [Mario] We had to overcome the challenges
in our lives together.
Davide would like, cook chicken for us
while my mother was out working.
I would pick him up at school
and I would take him to the hospital
when my mother couldn't take him to the hospital.
We made it in New York because we were together.
- I was in this whole new like, place, this America,
and I was like, I just figured out that Marilyn Monroe
wasn't Italian and they like, the voice was dubbed.
You know what I mean?
Like, when you're a little kid, you don't really know
that like, some Italian person is like,
talking over Marilyn's voice or like, cartoons and stuff.
And I just came to America and I was like,
oh shit we have television, these people are speaking
a different language.
How does that go about?
I used to get lost on the train all the time I hated that.
I was like seven years old taking the train by myself.
[imperious music]
- He was a very shy child that was
in this little shell.
He was like in an egg or something.
Maybe it was the move to New York
that was a big shock for him.
- Davide hated it.
I mean, Davide refused to speak English.
Dave just wanted to go home.
He was so disattached.
- He knew he was going to die quite young.
He knew the older he got, the closer to the end he was.
So, he kind of didn't invest so much.
And as soon as he somehow owned it
and put it behind him and said hey, you know what,
I'm gonna live life the way that I want to.
I'm not gonna live life like a sick child.
I'm gonna live it.
And that was it.
It was like, he played soccer, he roller bladed,
and he had lose bones so he was really in danger
of really hurting himself.
And he didn't care, he was like, I love this,
I'm gonna do it and he was an amazing roller blader.
You know, fearless.
[boisterous music]
- [Mario] My brother and I would stay out
'till late sometimes hanging out, skateboarding,
playing basketball in the parks.
New York was different then.
It was a hard city but it was also cool,
there was also a lot of energy.
- [Vanina] It was like an amusement park compared to Italy.
So much youth culture around you.
- He wrote, gonna be exposed,
at some point or another to graffiti
and I think in an artistic family, something about it,
like, struck a chord with us.
It was a way to express ourselves.
Davide took it extremely seriously.
You could see his tag was everywhere.
You couldn't go down a street without seeing his tag
on a block from uptown to downtown everywhere.
- He was highly creative.
I remember one night, he was 10, and he asked to borrow
a movie camera and he shot a piece
with two his fighter dolls.
We were blown away that he did this whole piece at 10.
And then I remember another episode,
fighting at school with the art teacher.
She gave him a really bad grade
because he did this picture of the sky
and the sky was black.
And she said, you know, skies are blue they're not black.
And he said, well you know this is my interpretation.
So she says, no you do it in blue.
And he says, well my father said that you do what you feel,
that's what art is about.
- [Woman] So, what's she like, your mother?
I mean as a photographer, as a person.
- Like a person that I-- just like a very strong woman.
It was just my mother and three children.
She was working at a coffee shop.
And then, but she was always like, streamlined it
and never like, got freaked out.
So, she was able to like, you know, she started becoming
a Fashion Stylist and you know, I know from there,
she got into this whole like weird fashion thing.
And from there she was just chillin'.
You know? [chuckles]
- I held so many jobs.
I did everything.
Decorated apartments, worked as a waitress,
it goes on and on.
And then I had a break.
My career took off.
[relaxing music]
We had the studio and the dark room
and all the equipment and lighting.
It was so natural, it was like a family business, you know.
And we all played around with it.
- I knew Davide, I mean, I really became close to Davide
through Francesca Sorrenti,
'cause I was close to his mother.
'Cause I was a stylist then,
Davide would always want to borrow clothes
and he was just always interested in things.
- I remember a couple of times
where I had met with Francesca about a shoot or something
and Davide came with her.
He would camp out in my office
and asked me questions, questions, questions, questions.
He wanted to see everything.
He had a comment on everything.
He had a ton of energy.
- I am your brother and your son is my, whatever.
I just wanted to know everything about everything, kind of.
I just wanted to have, like, total understanding of things.
I kind of started hanging out with older people,
like, much older than me, like some of my friends are 30,
some of them are 26.
I guess it's just because I'm like fond of 'em
because they know like, a lot.
- He was very oddly worldly.
There was this touch of juvenile delinquent
meets artistic.
Dave had that charm wherever we went.
I remember once I went to see Yves Saint Laurent's show.
[upbeat operatic music]
So very posh.
And we were sitting there and I remember,
Franca Sozzani from Italian Vogue there
and she's sitting directly across the way of the runway.
And he says to me, mom, who's that beautiful lady across
the room, she's stunning.
I'd love to take a picture of her. [laughs]
You know, of course, Franca Sozzani,
everybody, you know, walks on eggs when they're around her.
But he's staring at her and she waves to him.
So he goes around and he sits with her
and I'm thinking, I'm the photographer,
I've worked for Italian Vogue
and there's my son going to sit with Franca Sozzani.
And then we go out that night, and we go to this restaurant
and I see Franca, she's goes, ciao Davide.
You know and it's like, come stai?
And I'm like, okay. [laughs]
Davide had that energy about him.
[radio static]
- Hot 97, you know what I'm sayin?
We gonna keep it going, keep it goin' and keep it flowin'.
Then we gonna come back, with my man Craig Bank
and Biggie Smalls in the house, a'ight.
- [Biggie] And South France in the house.
- [Man] Now, ladies and gentleman of the radio audience,
it gives me a great pleasure to introduce you to SKE.
- I had walked into class one day and I saw this kid
with these bright pink socks.
He just had this whole cool style about him.
So we just kinda hit it off.
We were both two, like, rascals.
We always liked to play fight and run around and throw eggs
off the roof of his building.
Just cause a ruckus.
I introduced him to all my friends downtown
and we kind of put it all together and formed a crew.
- Like a pack, it's sort of like,
the teenage rat pack [chuckles] that's sort of
how I saw them as a group.
- Definitely he's someone that you didn't forget.
Like a first meeting with him left something with you
that you took away.
- Real into art and being creative and into graffiti
and photography and style.
It was always about style.
- Before I had met Dave and I had seen his tag,
I had imagined that he was like this big tall dude,
like, huge, jacked because all his tags were so high
and in all these crazy places.
So you'd just imagined that whoever is doing this has balls.
Then when I met him, he was just this little dude.
- You know, when we first met, to be honest with you,
like I thought he was somebody's little brother.
But his personality was fucking huge
and his voice was even massive.
He had like an old man's voice.
Yo, what's up?
Yo, Dick, what are you doing?
Pass the blunt.
He had this kind of weird like,
Italian meets downtown voice.
- Dave was definitely at the forefront
of that kind of sense of adventure.
It was Friday night and I'd say, bye, Ma.
And I'd go out the front door
and I had no idea where we were gonna go.
- You know, I didn't know if I was gonna get punched
in the face, I didn't know if I was gonna end up on some crazy adventure,
I didn't know if I was gonna be runnin' from the cops.
I really didn't know what was gonna happen.
- We skateboarded, we roller bladed, we wrote graffiti.
- [Ivan] We really just ran around like maniacs.
Uptown, downtown, west side, east side,
just, we ran the city like we just straight ran shit.
- [Ivan] And there was something
that we really relished in being
bad boys and we liked having that reputation.
[grinding and rustling]
- With his graffiti, basically one time we got called in,
he was, police had him in the subway station precinct
and we went in to pick him up
and said, what did he do?
He was writing graffiti.
One cop started chucklin' and we're like,
well, where did he do it?
And he's like, he was doing it right on the front door of
the subway entrance to the precinct.
Davide was writing his tag and the cop opened the door
[chuckles] and was like, what are you, stupid?
["Shook Ones Part II" by Mobb Deep ft. Everlast]
♪ Yeah
♪ To all the killers and the hundred dollar billas ♪
♪ Dealers, check it out now
- Argue as his tag, fit him perfectly.
- Yeah. - Like, he was just a mad,
- arguing ass nigga.
Here's the A, you know what I'm sayin?
The R, which blends into the G.
- [Ivan] The core of a lot of our camaraderie was graffiti.
- The essence of it was exposure and notoriety
and like, fame.
- That's kind of, where like Dave,
I'm sure got a lot of his vision for fashion.
What a perfect tag for that little shit.
- Always like, in your face, like counter to everything.
It's such an argue, fucker.
Yeah, perfect tag for Dave.
I remember the day that he was kind of declared as the crew.
- Davide wanted to switch it to where
the crew was part of your tag.
- And you know, they probably spent a ton of time
just trying to figure out how to make SKE like, something.
- We thought it was like cooler
and the next level of graffiti.
- And then once you had the initials
then you started to think of what it could mean.
- When we were younger, I guess it was Some Kids Envied
because all the kids, like, we would be like,
oh they all envy us.
When we got a little bit older, it would be like,
See Know Evil because we understood what evil was
and we could see it and we know what it was.
So, it would be like, See and Know Evil.
- Okay.
- Everybody here was put on to marijuana by Dave.
- Fucking Dave. - That first time.
- He wasn't really scared to experiment with drugs.
- He's not even scared of just with life.
You know what I'm sayin'?
Like, there are people who worry about what they're gonna do,
like, I find myself bothering my mind about,
oh what am I gonna be?
Am I gonna be successful?
Am I gonna have a life when I get older?
Dave didn't care.
He wasn't worried about what was gonna happen to him.
In fact, whatever was going on it right now,
that's the best enough to him.
[splashing]
- What?
- [Richie] He was fearless, he was so fearless.
A lot of people who knew Davide didn't know he had
the disease and he didn't act like he had a disease,
he didn't act like he was sick, he didn't act like he needed
to sleep every night with a thing that pumped iron
into his blood and he kinda hid that.
- [Francesca] You know, he wasn't about to tell his friends
that his legs were killing him
and that his stomach was upset or his back hurt him.
- One day we were at his house,
we started like play fighting and all the sudden
he took one of his syringes, filled it up with water,
and he started spraying it like a water gun.
And he's spraying me, and spraying me, and spraying me.
Like an idiot, I grabbed the knife
and I just went to like reflect that like, water
and I stuck the knife right in his wrist
and it just stuck there.
I literally started crying and running around.
But he was just cool as a whistle, he was just like,
wow, this is fucking crazy.
So, I called Fran and she started screaming
on the other phone.
She ran to the house, we took him to the hospital.
From that moment on, I kind of knew the extent
of his disease and his mom had told me like,
you really can't play fight with Davide
and you really can't rough him up
'cause he loses blood cells.
So, after that I kinda got a lesson,
a little bit about what it was.
- Even though he looked five years younger
on the inside his organs were like
a 50 year old man's organs.
'Cause they deteriorate at such a speed.
Nobody saw that, nobody would even imagine it
for one second even, 'cause he was so young.
- [Richie] He would sleep over at my house and he would come
with his machine that he had to sleep with.
And I think to see that was a little bit scary.
That like, this kid had to sleep
with this thing on every night.
- Main thing of the disease is I'm missing the gene
that makes healthy red blood cells.
Red blood cell is the cell that carries
the oxygen through the body.
Without that, we're dead.
I met Davide at The New York Hospital.
We were teenagers and we were getting transfused.
We were going through what other teenagers
were going through,
except we were getting transfused every 14 days
but that built such a commodity between us.
We had so much fun.
We just laughed and these were long days, 10, 11 hours.
I remember sometimes we would get done 10:30 at night,
11 o'clock at night.
We would joke around, we should just bring out pillows.
'Cause everything had to be a joke with us.
It made time go faster, if we laughed, you know,
throughout the transfusion treatment.
So, there was a joke sometimes like, who's the next one?
Who's the next one that's gonna die? That was a joke.
Who is the next one?
- I started taking pictures in New York.
I practiced for a few years before I was modeling in Europe.
- First time I met Mario was because I'd become friendly
with David Simms through The Dark Room
and he had met Mario and Mario didn't really know anyone
in London and so David said,
can you hang out with him, basically.
So, I invited him to my house.
And we pretty much hung out every day.
And then he said to me, I just met this girl,
she's really cute.
And it was Kate.
And then he took pictures of Kate
and then he got hired at Calvin and then his career,
just sort of took off.
[beeping]
It was so fast.
He looked like he was really prepared for it.
And I would say the same thing about Davide.
They both had an inner confidence on set straight away
that was kind of unflappable.
- When I met Mario, the way the fashion photography
was done at that particular time,
was it was very glossy.
It was all about these big herculean girls,
big hairdos, big shoulder pads,
and there was a movement from Europe,
which basically had a whole group of younger photographers
who were influenced by the grunge movement here.
The emerging sensibility was kind of a reaction
to an existing establishment.
["Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana]
- It was a funny period in fashion.
At that time a lot of Europeans were coming to New York,
bringing a new sense of style
and a new way of making pictures that was very fresh.
[camera shutter clicking]
- If you think about the world that we live in today,
it was born in the 90's.
That was really a New York moment.
- It was like some of the little Teutonic plates shifting
when everyone suddenly moved to New York.
Rent wasn't that expensive.
There was a lot of opportunity
and there was a lot of young people.
Although none of us would admit it,
we were wildly ambitious
and New York's a great place for ambition.
- [Mutale] It's done become a magnet
for all these kind of artistic people
who are being put in positions of power
within corporate structures in America.
New York started being more of a center for people
to come and practice the work.
- And it was a real kinetic energy
and a feeling that something was happening.
[rock music]
- So many extremes have been pushed.
I mean, you can't be any more death than Death or Slayer.
I have to kill myself, you know, to really get a reaction.
- That was a period that young people said,
we don't want this, we don't want it at all.
And they were rebelling.
♪ Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to ♪
- Maybe it was Kurt Cobain and Nirvana.
Whole kind of Seattle scene was really influential.
- Everything you can say about the 80's, you know,
had an opposite reaction in the 90's.
- [Jaime] It was just very different
and it was very exciting.
You could see that, like, the landscape of things
were changing in every way.
- There was the one from like--
- Throw ???
- 9:30 to 3:00.
I don't have to tell you to press play, do you?
- Davide's photography started to blossom
after Mario was hailed, as sort of like,
a little bit of a wunderkind.
- He really looked up to me
and he really emulated everything that I did.
- [Francesca] Well, Mario was always an influence on Davide.
When Mario was into modeling and keeping himself
with model appearance, Dave felt he had to do that too
and then Mario started to shoot
and showed him the camera
and he realized he loved the camera too.
- He kinda wanted what we had, you know what I mean?
He was kind of sick of being at home on his machine,
being restricted, he wanted a life for himself.
And he saw what we were doing
and I think he saw that as a vehicle for himself.
- [David] So, Davide sort of took advantage
of the opportunity of being Mario's younger brother
and would tag along on sets so he got to,
kind of, get into that world.
- Davide was into photography because he born into it.
It was all around him.
So, he was like, the next up and more raw with it.
[melancholic music]
- [Vanina] He was never concerned with his style.
It was already there and defined.
It was just about capturing it.
- [Mario] Davide was a New York kid.
The way he approached photography was probably
the same way the he approached the streets, you know,
and the way he approached graffiti.
He just kind of went into it and he charmed it.
- [Chris] Dave understood the idea of style
before a lot of people our age.
And when I say style I don't mean fashion, I mean,
the idea that you can do something a certain way
and give it certain properties
and if you do it with enough finesse,
then it's awesome.
- Seemed to me like a real honor
when Dave decided that you were part of the group
or part of his life, that he would waste the frame on you.
He had, like, a sensitivity to those experiences
in those situations that allowed him to appreciate,
you know, really with what was going on.
Maybe his health situation contributed
to him feeling like he needed to really hold on
to those moments.
- His work has that feeling of hanging with him.
There's always this certain light
that seemed kind of magical.
I went over to his house after school one day
and just seen all his work on the walls.
I think there was such a mix of photos of skaters,
and graffiti writers, and thugs, and models,
and it was just all his life.
It was all one thing.
Reportage photography.
- He lived with this fearlessness that I think came from him
not being afraid to live because he could die.
I remember being so terrified everyday of everything,
you know, I was so uncomfortable that I was gonna like,
say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing
and here was this character who seemed
to kind of rise above all of that.
- And even though I was dating his brother,
it was like Davide's mission to make sure
that we were always cuddling.
And Mario was always like, Davide, get off my girl.
- Dave be like, yeah whatever. [laughs]
- I mean, being a teenager is both the most awesome
and the worst thing in the world
it's awesome because you feel totally invincible
and it's the worst because you're a teenager
and dumb as shit.
- There is definitely some questionable choices made,
let's put it that way.
- So once, Dave had been in the hospital
for a collapsed lung.
So he couldn't smoke weed 'cause his lungs were collapsed,
so we got a bunch of shrooms and we decided
we're gonna eat these shrooms and go up
to the Museum of Natural History.
At some point we wind up in the Hall of Mammals.
We're like, buggin' out up there.
Dave noticed the walrus diorama and for some reason
he found the walruses to be the most amusing things
he had ever seen in his life.
So he starts laughing and he's trying to get us
to look at the walruses but I remember
he was laughing so hard that he couldn't talk,
plus he had had a collapsed lung like a week or two earlier
and so he was having a hard time breathing.
The next thing I know he fucking walks backwards,
stumbles over the guardrail
and falls into the walrus diorama,
which we all think is the most hilarious thing
that's ever happened.
So we're like literally, I don't mean figuratively,
we're literally rolling around on the floor laughing
and then we get up and we realize Dave's not moving.
So we're like, yo Dave, get up.
Yo, Dave, get up.
And Dave's fucking passed out
in the walrus diorama, eyes open.
I immediately thought like, holy shit,
this is a fucking after school special.
Like, our friend's gonna die in the walrus diorama
'cause fucking did mushrooms and went
to the Museum of Natural History.
So, we all started panicking, fucking panicking
and literally running around in circles.
I think somebody was trying to find a security guard,
somebody else was like trying to call 9-1-1.
And then Dave just kinda sat up and he was like,
yo, let's get out of here.
And we got in a cab and we went home.
Like, that was the kind of shit that would happen
on a semi-regular basis.
[whimsical music]
- Dave was part of this pack of boys
that I would always see running around
the building of my parents.
At some point we just kind of introduced ourselves
'cause you know, all those boys were very sort of cute,
and charming, and mischievous, and intriguing to me.
I really fondly remember Davide calling me
whenever he would wake up, which was never early.
He would ask me to buy him a chipwich at the deli downstairs
from his house and I would and we would just go hang out
in his room and talk.
I was just, kind of, messing around with the idea of being
a stylist and I saw his journal, he showed it to me
and I just suggested that we do a project together.
He helped me, I helped him
and it just all kind of started from there.
I remember like the first major project
that we worked on together, he had this idea
that he wanted to shoot his friends
doing all of their amazing tricks
in these very refined suits.
I pulled a ton of really nice menswear
and we put them all in it.
His stepdad, Steve, drove us around in their maroon minivan.
I just have this memory of like, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
and just riding around with a bunch of wild boys
and they just went crazy.
♪ Foe tha' love of money
♪ Gotta make that money, man
♪ It's still the same now
♪ Gotta make that money, man
♪ Gotta get on the grind
♪ Pop in the clip of my nine
And it got published.
And that was huge exposure for both of us
and it happened in the most organic way.
That was kind of the beginning of our relationship,
I guess, from a professional standpoint,
if you would call it that.
Even though we were working, it never felt like work.
Like, we would just hang out, ideas would be born
and they would come to life.
He would always just kind of take me on these adventures.
I always felt like I was with my little brother
and we were going on these missions.
- He's like a little boss in a way.
- Our whole crew is very ambitious,
whether it's starting a clothing line,
or starting a rap group, or throwing parties,
or selling drugs.
Whatever it was, everybody was super ambitious.
- They were very, like, business suvvy, in a way.
They were able to capitalize
on everything that they were doing.
- We are, I don't know how to say it
without sounding like an asshole but like, we were cool.
You know what I mean?
Like, we had this sense that people started
to be interested in the things that we were telling
them were cool
- And then we did these things.
Sorry to get out of the picture.
Because of Davide, you know, we did this infamous
sticker that like, bong, Davide was always around models
and we were those punk kids with the attitudes,
and fuck the system, and fuck the world, and all that shit.
So, it was like, you know, fuck models.
Models suck.
Through that, we made the models suck shirts,
we gave 'em to models, that started picking up,
blowing up.
We would always just wanna create buzz.
Any time we went bombing or we had a group of kids skating
or skateboarding, like Hal Hunter and all these kids,
we'd give them a bunch of stickers
and they would plaster them all over the city.
Like, before you knew it, it was everywhere.
There was a story in Vogue that said Calvin Klein
was sabotaging his own ads with these models suck stickers
to create buzz.
So, we called up that person who wrote the article
and we were like, are you kidding me?
That's not Calvin Klein, that's us.
The next month they corrected it and said it was us.
- New York magazine talked about the group, the SKE group.
They were the beginning of their own youth movement within
the fashion industry.
- [Mario] For Davide, he recognized the power of the media
and how he could access that right away.
He was getting his pictures out,
and he was making those connections,
and he was super social,
and he was at parties all the time.
- Davide was always just the charming little guy,
you know, everyone loved Davide.
And by the way, he's just, happens to be hanging out
on some of the best sets in the industry
and so he totally milked it for everything.
He would charm the pants off all the girls
and then of course be like, hey, can I take your picture?
Like, on the side here?
Next thing you know it, Davide's like,
got all the best girls in his book.
- For a 17 year old, he was very professional.
Like he could instruct the model how to move,
and he would set up the whole set himself,
you know, he was a one man show.
- He had this ability to make you feel comfortable
and he was really loving, warm, sweet.
Modeling always made me insecure
and I was intimidated by that whole world
but not with Davide.
Davide, when he would look at me,
it was like he was looking at me.
When he would take my picture, he just wanted
to take Jade's picture.
I wasn't supposed to be like,
a professional model or anything.
I loved working with Davide
and I wanted to do it all the time.
I wish he was the only [laughs] photographer
that I ever had to work with.
- He took this one picture of me,
that's one of my favorite pictures of me,
lying on the very edge of the roof of our building.
He was standing on the edge and trying to get the cars below
and me in the same frame.
I think about it now and I'm like, if Fran was there,
oh my gosh, but that was Davide,
he would do anything to get the shot.
You know, he wasn't thinking about the fact
that like, oh, I could totally fall.
He was always on the edge of something dangerous.
- I've worked with a lot of photographers
and they can around and around in circles
trying to find that moment but he knew what he wanted.
Poses were always quite lyrical, they almost were statuesque
or Renaissance Italian figures.
There was something really romantic and heroic
about the shapes of the models.
He would push the models to such an extent,
they'll be just that point where the body is about to break
or tip over, that was always a point that he would get.
Just that last little push over the edge.
- Fashion is good and evil, it's all wrapped into one.
The best people, most interesting, so artistic,
so revolutionary in their their thinking, visionaries
and then at the same time, so self-destructive, so insecure.
When you're young and beautiful,
everybody wants to be close to you,
everybody wants a piece of that beauty.
The fashion industry, that's how it runs
it just takes youth and beauty and it feeds on it.
You know, a lot of girls didn't have the foresight,
didn't have have the right mentors,
didn't have people protecting them.
I know Jaime didn't have that.
- Jaime, where's Jaime King?
- [Reporter] Recently the New York Times magazine
pegged Jaime as one of the next supermodels.
- She was really made for this.
It's her personality. - Really?
- [Reporter] In what way?
- She's kind of an adventurist.
[laughing]
Just kind of, spunky.
[rock music]
- I met Jaime, when she was 15 years old
and I did a job with her.
She was a very, very cool, young girl.
- Wild child, yeah, very beautiful, very charismic.
She was special.
- It was one of my first campaigns
and working with Mario Sorrenti was such a huge deal for me.
The whole thing felt like it a dream, you know?
And I remember Davide came in with his like,
it was like a yellow Northface and he was all like,
oooh, like, Davide came in like he owned the joint.
- And then I went back to Europe and then when I came back,
I think they were hanging out.
- You know, and she had a really special relationship
with him, they talked about everything.
They had a lot in common.
- I was very sick my whole life,
as a child and I had multiple, multiple surgeries,
so when I met Davide I felt like there was one other person
that kinda understands what it was like for me
when I was a kid growing up.
He had these moments where he would really,
I don't know if it was a-- it wasn't loneliness
but it was a solitary nature that I think came
with his disease.
- I think they both experienced a lot of pain
and they did connect on that level.
Being so young and going through so many things
at such a young age.
- I think it actually took a moment
but when we all realized, oh Dave's got like,
a girlfriend, it's like a real thing.
- She was like a girl who didn't exist in real life.
Like, she was the girl who literally stepped out of
the pages of you know, magazines.
- [Mario] And he really fell for her.
- [Vanina] He was very passionate and so tender.
They both were really in awe of each other.
- Like, a great, tender, happy moment
that I remember with Davide was,
Davide and I and like three of my best friends
drove to a concert in Wisconsin.
Everyone had fallen asleep and Davide and I
are watching this incredible sunrise
and we just went out and we were shooting and exploring
and like, I remember that moment so distinctly
and I remembered that being, was glorious,
I had ever seen the sky my life, even to this day.
Having that moment with him through pictures
and the intimacy of just being together and being young
and seeing such beautiful landscape
and everyone else was sleeping.
And a lot of the times it felt like
there was an understanding between us, like,
everyone else was sleeping and that we were the only two
that really understood.
There would be days where he would just be so tired
and his body would hurt so bad that he didn't even want
to like, get out of bed.
And then him trying to hide that or cover that
with whatever he was doing because he would.
But that's where think, where part of his huberous came in.
Because of the illness, in a strange way,
that also made him a very beautiful artist
because he was incredibly sensitive,
and compassionate, and empathetic.
You just felt like you were seeing something very intimate,
you felt like you were seeing something very spontaneous,
you felt like he captured people in the moment
of them being who they were.
- [Chris] Some of the best photographs ever taken
of Jaime King were taken by Davide Sorrenti.
You could tell, like, he really loved her.
She was his muse.
- [Richie] Dave had, kind of like,
captured lightning in a bottle
there, like, she was a, you know, she was,
you know, she was something.
- [Ivan] She looked like she was perfection
but she had other things that were on her mind.
I think he was drawn to her bad side a little bit.
- [Shawn] The two of them together might've been like
a crazy force that was, he couldn't really fight it.
- Davide, by surprise, came by the office one day
and we didn't know who he was.
We thought he was delivering something to us.
But when we asked what he was delivering,
he didn't really want to give us anything.
So after some inquisition,
he'd say that he was a young photographer starting out
and if we were interested to look at his work.
[melodic music]
He has on his hand a thick black book.
Photographers who come to see editors with little books like
that are really photographers
who are just starting out with personal work.
They haven't really done magazines,
they haven't done anything that's really published.
In the book was a snapshot, pictures, recollections
here and there, little things, archival stuff.
But what's more efficient was some of the remarks about
people, about how he sees things.
Photographers need not prove to anybody
whether they could do magazine,
whether they could do this or that.
They have to show us if they have a personal vision.
A way they see things that are different
and how they translate all of that into the visual.
So, I hired him.
What we did in the first story was we took a bunch
of his friends and we went to do a shooting
in the subway system.
We rented a van and we get all his friends dressed upstairs
and we would all go down together to the subway.
I would be the surveillance master.
Look out for the police, look out for trains arriving,
and trains going.
[shutter clicking]
We're not talking about just in the subway.
We're talking, on the subway track.
- [Matt] Maybe because of his awareness and his mortality,
Davide's photographs always had the sense, like,
immediate danger.
You know, he definitely wasn't glamorous,
- [Richard] And sort of, that moment after innocence
but before we started to realize everything's
not so great all the time,
Davide's work, is that moment frozen in time.
- [Man] What's the coolest shoot you've done?
- Probably just stuff for me, just like,
meeting people on the street, just walking around.
I could never, I never really liked any fashion shoots.
You know, just because I just like documentary
but like more photography stuff better.
You know like, like Robert France, and just walking around.
Fashion is more like, I think it's like a way to get money
so that you can do your personal stuff.
- [Man] Like, what kind of stuff are you into?
- Just simple documentary stuff, you know,
nothing too glamorous or fabulous or whatever you want
to call it, I'm just into like, regular everyday life
kind of stuff, you know.
Basically like this place is cool, you know,
I'm into this place and nothing too outrageous, like,
big fricken' posing models, looking like swans and shit.
- His edits were non-negotiable.
So, basically, you are getting what you are given.
And [laughs] that was it
and my job was to try and convince everybody
that they weren't being dismissed as children.
It's quite bruising to have an 18 year old kid tell you
that this is what you're gonna get
and basically not to ask any questions
because he knows better, he's the artist.
[melodic piano music]
He had a complete style, approach, and a language.
There was always an exploration for truth
out of everything.
I mean, it could be as simple as music
that he was listening to,
a piece of clothing, a tag on a wall.
There was no separation between life and art for him.
So, everything was about feeling, and execution,
and aesthetic, and it was always this sense of,
there was always this sense of,
taste is a wrong word for it.
- And there were some days that you didn't see Davide
because you knew that he kind of pushed himself too hard,
not because he was partying, he was shooting.
He was out shooting his fans, he was staying up really late
and just kind of soaking everybody's energy in around him.
As if like, well, as if he knew that he had to.
I mean, this was his moment to live, you know.
- He was like that flame, you know,
the typical story of all the moths around this flame,
it was like he was so beautiful, so bright,
I mean, he was sitting at a table, you just smiled.
That was the amazing thing, you know?
People just smiled, like who is this kid?
- That time of my life, my business was not in a good place
because I was too commercial.
Davide Sorrenti walked into my life one day
and he came in with this energy
that I have never experienced before.
I had a receptionist.
Her orders were to never let anybody behind
without being announced and accepted.
He just got by her.
And I hear this kid talking in the hallway to people.
I go out of my office going, what's going on there?
And there's this kid with his trainers on, and jeans,
and a t-shirt and a little necklace around his neck.
And he goes, dude.
He didn't even know who I was at that moment either.
It didn't matter that I was David Lipman and that Lipman was my company.
I could've been Joe Schmo at that point.
For Dave, it didn't matter who you were.
You were the same.
And then we started looking into his books.
We just spent hours together that first moment.
It's hard for me to stop my day
but that day he stopped my day.
And I knew, at some point,
I was gonna give this young man a job.
[water crashing and splashing]
When I met him, I had no idea he was sick.
Somebody else told me,
do you know that Davide's really sick?
And I said, what do you mean he's really sick?
This kid can't be sick!
There's nobody healthier that I've ever met than this kid.
Then they told me about his blood disorder
and disease and that he didn't have long to live.
Matter of fact, he might not get out of his 20's!
I heard that and I just, my heart broke.
- With Dave, it was like he was kind of in a hurry.
There was a clock ticking.
When you smell roses, when you know you're only here
for another few weeks it's the most incredible
thing you've ever smelled in your life.
Your senses are sharpened, so to speak.
And I think Dave kind of had that.
I had a tattoo down the Jersey Shore and he was like,
I'd really like to pay for that
'cause then you'll always remember me.
He would say things like that and it'd be like, cuh.
You know, he was aware.
- [Mario] Right around when he was 20
he was having a lot of physical problems.
- He was told that osteoporosis was setting in.
I think what he said is that in a couple of years
he could be in a reduced spending a lot of time
in a wheelchair, which was just not Davide.
- I remember like times where he would come back
from the hospital and friends that he grew up
with the same disease, would pass away.
And then him having to deal with that.
And then like what do you really say to someone?
- Oh, God.
From back then, our group was good.
We had fun.
Steven.
Davide.
From back then a good portion of us had passed away.
A lot of us passed away.
If you go to the clinic now there's only like 15 of us.
- Well, I like the idea of having kids.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
I look at my baby pictures and there isn't that many,
so I'd like to take pictures of all my kids.
Like, as their growing up, you know what I mean?
Like, maybe like one picture a month.
I have it like all figured out already.
- I mean, I can't even imagine what it would be like
to not see yourself as a grown up.
You just automatically take that other picture
and you're like all I have is like right now.
So, what am I gonna do?
I'm gonaa-- let's go fuckin', let's go write graffiti
and smoke fucking blunts 'till we can't see.
- [Mario] When these pictures were dark,
they weren't just dark because my pictures were dark.
I think they were dark because he made a connection
with what they expressed.
- He always wanted to portray in his fashion photography
sort of the depth of his own, I guess despair.
The darkness for him didn't speak of drugs,
it spoke of a dreamworld.
And that's how he put it.
He's like, Ma, it was like a dream and your melancholy.
I remember him using that word melancholy.
And I think that's how he sort of saw himself.
- In every single magazine that you see nowadays
they look like heroin addicts.
Their eyes are sunken in,
their poses are that of somebody who's loaded.
- That whole a heroin chic moment,
I think was a pretty pathetic moment for fashion
and that's something that certainly we didn't try
to endorse but a lot of the more Avant-garde magazines did.
To show a lot of emaciated girls looking depressed,
like they just finished shooting up.
I mean, I don't think that's the kind of image
that you want to see in women's magazines.
- [Jaime] What people don't understand about heroin chic
is that it wasn't about heroin.
It was about being real.
It was about no makeup, greasy hair, I don't care.
This is who I am.
That's what Mario Sorrenti was about.
That's what Davide Sorrenti was about.
- He never made you pose, he was always looking for
that moment where you were really true to yourself.
That's what's different about his photographs
and other people photographs at that time
was he wanted to see you vulnerable
and naked, not being cool.
You know what I mean?
Like, he wanted to show your imperfections.
- [Chris] As the years grew on the images started
to become a little darker.
I mean, not just Davide's but everybody's.
And I think it really reflected, kind of, a mood
that sort of crept in, in the industry at that time.
- The people who were creating these images
were actually documenting what was going on.
Kids' interest in heroin at that particular time
was a reflection of what
they weren't being given by society.
And it was being exploited in the commercial fashion.
To sell clothes, to sell livestock, to sell magazines,
it was being used to sell.
- And all the sudden there was this huge drug movement
going on and everybody thought it was cool.
Nobody thought it would hurt anyone.
- Our peers were partying, our agents were partying,
our managers were partying.
It was pretty much are free-for-all.
- The people that were supposed to be, quote-unquote,
protecting you, were also the people using
and abusing drugs.
We were just a little kids doing whatever we wanted to do
but at the same time you feel like if you're not doing
what the adults are doing then they won't hire you
or book you.
That creates a really toxic combination.
- She loved Davide, dearly.
The only thing is, at the time, you know,
she was on drugs and heroin does make people
do very odd things but that is not talking bad about Jaime.
Like I said, Jaime was a victim.
You know, at 14 a photo assistant turned her on to drugs
and she got caught up and she was addicted
and nobody did anything to help her not be addicted.
- Like, I was ashamed.
Like, when you're that young and you start doing
these things that like all of these adults
are doing around you and you're just a kid
and you don't know the difference 'cause you think
that you're experimenting, you don't think it's a big deal,
and then all the sudden you're like in a really dark place.
I know that he wasn't like, a huge fan of
the harder drugs.
- I mean, we did all sorts of drugs
but there are a couple things that were kind of very taboo.
Heroin being one of them.
- You know, to me at the time,
it just existed in an entirely different world.
It wasn't part of my world until it was
and then when it was, it's a little bit of a labyrinth.
It can be hard to navigate your way out.
I did end up having my own experiences with heroin.
And interestingly enough, like the only person
who really called me on that, ever, was Dave.
He didn't come at me all aggressively
or anything like that and tell me I was being an idiot.
You know, but did call me on it in his own way.
- Davide, I think, went in thinking that he could
kind of save Jaimes from doing the drugs.
Jaimes kinda fought it.
- Dave would say he was gonna help her.
I guess they all say that.
- It was also at a time where I feel like
he was very much establishing his independency.
He moved out of his mom's house.
- Jaime King and Davide lived in the brownstone
and then it turned into the frat house of New York City.
All beautiful people, they would hang out
there all night long.
- There were a lot of people there.
You know, it was like, it was a lot of teenagers
hanging out, sleeping on couches, shit all over the place,
artwork all over, photographs,
fashion magazines, everything was like.
- I lived with them for a while until we got kicked out
or something cuz her family came and saw
that it was like the party.
We were growing weed in the apartment.
Her dad came and like, blew up the spot.
- I think everybody knew something weird was happening
and it was hard to say exactly what it was. I know it was hard for me.
I knew.
Like, again, things were just started getting
a little bit more secretive and like,
shut off from other parts of this crew
that we had for years.
- There was some natural fracturing of the crew.
Everyone's got their own aspirations
of what they want to do with their life
and I think those things were taking hold.
- You know, the last year was a really tough year
of all those really sweet kids that were exploding
with energy and creativity had gotten sucked into drugs
and nightlife and some sort of positive energy
was being sucked out of them.
It's kind of like a stage in some people's lives
they go through, you know.
I went through a stage like that in my life
and then you come out from the other side
and it's like day again, you know?
When you're the type of person that's creative
and you're pushing boundaries
that eventually you will get up to that edge
but you don't want to cross
but you want to like get up to that edge
to see what's there.
I was that kind of person, Davide was that kind of person.
He just needed to see how far he could push.
[imperious music]
- So, I wound up getting this client in Montreal, Canada,
which were two jean brands.
One was Buffalo Jeans and the other was Request.
But I let Davide cast the campaign.
I let Davide style the campaign.
It was all his.
- I'm really fond of Davide for having the vision.
To see Davide's talent and let Davide has his way.
He did good at his job.
- He didn't want to book all the girls from our agency.
He wanted to book a couple from the other agencies,
even though, the owner of my agency was appalled by it.
Davide stuck to his guns because he needed those girls.
He felt that they had the right stuff.
It was his first, like, real campaign
and he dug his heels in.
- So the style of things is one big table
and all the clothes are all rolled up in a ball.
There's no hangers, nothing passe like that.
And I go, Davide, what are you doing, man?
He's like, making the clothes look like shit. [chuckles]
Excuse my language.
And he goes, no, dude man, this is the way we live, man.
These are jeans for kids, you know,
like, this is the way it is.
And I could see the fear in the client's eyes
and I just walked them out and I said, you know,
you're about a young, youthful brand.
So youths would be to.
If you want, let him go.
And Davide would hold that camera in his hand
and take time exposed pictures
and I remember saying to him,
I said, they're all gonna be out of focus, Davide. [laughs]
I said, nothing's going to be sharp
and he goes, dude, don't worry man,
it's going to be the butters, it's going to be the butters,
butters, butters, butters,
that was those words for that moment.
When these prints came out and they were so beautiful.
Slapping that brand on it diminished
the photographs a bit.
It would have been amazing
if they're in an ID magazine in England at that time
as an editorial story or as an Art Exhibit
about the youthful moment of the 90's where we were.
They were way better than the brand
but then it didn't translate to dollars right away.
And then the company wasn't cool enough to understand
where to go with it.
But Dave was cool about it because I remember a time
where they didn't want to do it again
and Dave was like, fuck them, we'll do something else, man.
A lot of it was him coming of age too saying,
I've got it, I did it, it's an advertising job
and I photographed it.
So, it was a big accomplishment.
- [Mario] Davide was actually drawing up very, very quickly.
He was making huge steps in no time.
If it were me it would take me years and years
and for him it would happen over months.
- Okay, we're right down here now.
With the audience and we're going to ask them
what they think about all this hoopla that's going on.
Let's go.
So, we're standing here with
high fashion photographer, Davide Sorrenti.
Davide, what the hell, what's up man?
What were you thinking about Coolio
and just this show and all the girls.
I mean, have you ever been to anything like this?
- Yeah, man, but this one was butters,
you know, they have their life flowin',
their girlies are all good, clothes,
some of the clothes were all good.
- What about the champagne going around?
That's pretty nice.
- I don't know, I don't know represent on any champagne.
- Davide had positioned himself and was being recognized
by the industry as somebody to look out for.
Especially when you're that young
and you have the ability to be able to capture
those kind of images, you quickly come to the surface
and you're celebrated for being somebody
that we all need to be a part of.
- He so charmed everybody
and everybody saw so much promise in him
that the fashion world was anointing him.
- He was just starting to break through
from behind the shadow of his brother.
This was our golden boy.
- [Mario] He was in a weird place
and I think he was in a rush to get things done.
- Anyone that feels like there's an expiration date
on their life will constantly shift
between melancholy and wanting to live life to the fullest.
A recklessness and an honoring at the same time.
- You could see the drug use, which he denied.
It's inevitable, you know?
You want to do what your partner's doing,
you want to be close.
- You know, he was frustrated in many ways
because he knew that it was dangerous
but he also knew, well, I'm not here for that long anyway.
- I don't know how long the period was
when Dave first started to dabble in heroin
but when it got really bad, it got really bad, really fast.
- Dave started putting out more work
but he also seemed to be getting more fucked up.
- [Alex] With that drug, in particular,
it completely swallows up that person
that you thought you knew.
And it's just a shell of that person with this, like,
something else inside them.
- Everyone knew he was on it
but just didn't really know how to change it.
You know, no one knew where to go and what to do.
We were just like, I dunno, man.
- You don't want to alienate the person
but you don't want to condone this behavior.
And then you keep hoping for the best.
You kind of turn a blind eye to it.
You know when Alex Burns got involved in heroin,
people just straight up like kicked the shit out of him
thinking that that was going to do it.
And it didn't.
So, you can't beat up Davide 'cause he was kind of frail.
- [Alex] I had come out of the other side of that
and when the tables were turned,
I didn't, I didn't really have the character,
I don't think, to confront him about it.
That was something that I thought about
a lot over the years.
- [Vanina] That whole period was just like,
the end of the spiral.
You know, I remember it that way.
And this was like, he had already OD'ed like twice.
- [Richie] When he was like, yo, I died.
He said that to me, like yo, I died
and I came back to life.
I was dead, yo, and they brought me back to life.
And I was like, dude, what the, and he thought it was like,
cool and shit.
[laughing]
[foreign language]
- [Steve] He basically kind of, passed out,
and they had to call an ambulance,
took him to a hospital.
So, that was the real first wake up call.
That was a couple months before he died.
It was kind of painful for us all to go through,
to watch him, kinda, nosedive at the end.
And as he got into the hard drugs.
- [Glen] Dude, what camera have you got?
- I have the same kinda shit you got.
- No.
- And then I'll use your 35
because I never got to use your 35, I don't have a 35.
- Okay. - I only have a 40.
- [Radio] In Atlantic City, there's no place like Kansas
and a 22 year old woman...
- He always had this attitude of like, he's always right.
I was angry with him and I was like,
why are you doing this?
And he just turn around and he'd say,
well, you know, I'm dying inside.
I couldn't say anything.
You know what I mean?
I couldn't say anything.
What are you going to say to somebody, you know,
what are you gonna say?
He started becoming fatalist.
He's like, it doesn't matter, I don't care.
Which was a shame because he always cared,
so much, about everything.
You still wanted to, like, change that
and you knew you couldn't.
- I knew something horrible was about to happen
and the feeling just overwhelmed me.
I was doing a shoot in L.A.
and then I just said, you know,
Steve why don't we just go to Mexico for a week?
And we'll Dave, it's gonna be his vacation.
Anything you want to do, he'll do.
- The trip to Los Angeles was very strange.
It was like being in a dream.
He was just not in his body.
I don't know how to describe it.
Some part of him was leaving.
- He was very uncomfortable being away from the drugs.
We always had to keep him close and keep an eye on him.
We would pass pharmacies and he'd want to go in
and get something and I'd say,
no you can't go in to the drugstore.
- Dave and I went to go vintage shopping
and I remember him like launching into the middle of traffic
and I was like, what are you doing?
I was freaked out, I was like, what are you doing?
What is going on with you? I just didn't get it.
It was like he was just a different, it just,
like, he was just a different being.
I can't even say person.
It was like a different being.
I remember going back to the hotel and we decided
to go take some pictures together.
It was like the one where I'm flashing my butt.
And there's a picture of him and I together.
That was the last picture that we ever took together.
They were going to take him to Mexico
and I remember them asking me to go and I just wanted
to go home to Omaha, so bad.
I was so freaked out by that trip.
That was the last time that I saw Davide.
[mysterious music]
- [Steve] So, we went down there and had a really nice time.
Kind of reconnected a little bit in our sorta family way.
- And I remembered, the last shot on his camera,
we were in the water and the water was twinkling with sun
in his hair and it was, sort of, threw me off
because it looked almost magical.
You know and he's smiling and he's just standing there
with sand in his hand, turns around and he looks at me
and he's standing like that for a minute
and I'm like, Dave, get out of the water.
We have to leave, catch a plane.
He comes out and all of a sudden there's this big wave.
These fish come out and he catched this fish
that's about, I'd say, 12 inches and he's holding it.
And I said, throw it back. [laughs]
You know, let's go.
And he's like, no, let me give it to that lady over there
with her little boy.
So, he goes up to her and he gives her the fish
and she's like ecstatic and she's going, gracias, gracias.
And then he says, wait a minute, I have to take a picture.
So he gets his camera and he takes a picture of the fish,
of her holding the fish.
And that was the last shot on his camera.
When I got home and things went weird
and he died the day after.
And a week later, I developed the film
and there was the last picture.
[melancholic music]
My saving grace is that my son's last words to me were,
he went out the door, and I called his name,
and he turned around, and I said, Dave I want you to know
that I love you.
And he said to me, I love you too, Ma.
And that was it and that was last time I saw him.
And that, for me, makes it all okay.
- Police called.
They said they'd be at the house in 15 minutes
and it was like, the longest 15 minutes of my life.
I mean, time was just completely suspended,
it seemed like a tunnel, endless tunnel.
They come over and they said to my mother,
your child is dead.
The first thing that came to mind was,
thank God, he's safe, thank God, he's safe.
Which was the fucking truth, you know what I mean?
It was like, ahh, he's free.
You know, yeah, it fucking sucks for us big time
but he was free. [sobbing]
He was free.
- [Woman] Woo!
[waves crashing]
- I know for a fact, he did not want to die
sick in the hospital.
He had been in the hospital his whole life,
he was like, I don't want to die in a hospital, you know?
I don't wanna die like a sick person in a hospital.
You know?
Just wanna go.
- He was there for me in some
of the darkest times of my life.
He helped me, like, get out of the darkness.
I remember him, like, reaching out to me
and saying, dude, this is not good.
You know, come out and stuff, come with us, come back to us.
You know, I think a lot of who I am today is because of him.
[water dripping]
[thunder rumbling]
[thunder crashing]
- I remember when we went to the morgue.
He was smiling.
He was like, he was smiling.
And we were all like, [gasps]
and we all said it at the same time,
like, was that he's smiling. [chuckles]
That was like the biggest gift
that he could leave behind for us.
And he had it his way, you know?
It could only be his way.
Always.
It was always like, okay, Davide gets his way.
You know what I mean, you didn't even argue.
- [Jaime] When I say we mourned,
like, New York City mourned.
It was like everybody had a moment of silence.
So, I think that love obviously affected people
to the point where it became a thing.
- You know, I'd go to a photo shoot
and all I would do was cry.
I'd be shooting through tears.
I couldn't imagine all these mothers
who had lost their children.
I said, what are we a secret society of people in deep pain?
- We knew people in the industry
and Amy Spindler is a writer for the New York Times
and knew that Francesca was concerned about younger kids
in the business getting into drugs.
- [Francesca] And it started a whole ball rolling.
- You sent sent a strong message against drugs
at Davide's funeral to the mourners.
- I said, you cannot glamorize drugs
and I looked at Davide, and I said,
this is what drugs do, this is real,
what you are all doing isn't.
- [Mario] My mother tried to turn it into something positive.
She tried to make it into an example
so that other young kids wouldn't fall into that trap
of glamour and drugs, which still exists today in fashion
and hasn't gone anywhere.
- Davide's death was a lightning rod for that whole
thing to sort of, just, I dunno, you know, explode.
- [Reporter] Tonight, the fabulous world of high fashion,
glamour, allure, models,
but behind the scenes some have shocking secrets.
- Cocaine, heroin--
- I'm getting calls from CNN, 20/20.
Before I know it, you know,
President Clinton is making a comment.
- Today the President blasted designers
who use the heroin look to sell their clothes.
[audience applauding]
- In the press, in recent days,
we've seen reports and many of our fashion leaders
are now absolutely admitting,
and I honor them for doing this,
they're admitting flat out that images projected
in fashion photos in the last few years
have made heroin addiction seem glamorous and sexy and cool.
And as some of the people in those images
start to die, now, it's become obvious
that that is not true.
You do not need to glamorize addiction so close.
- When Bill Clinton talked about it,
I mean, everybody was like, what?
This is out of control.
- 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.
- [Mario] All the sudden we were just like attacked.
It was bad, it was negative.
We really wanted to try and mourn in privacy.
It just became like this huge public scandal.
- All of these people started turning all of the images
that we had made and they're like, oh this is the image
of heroin chic.
- [Mutale] This image, more than any other,
has come to epitomize Davide's association
with a glamorization of heroin.
- [Jaime] I distinctly remember when I posted this picture
that Davide had taken of me.
We were portraying the idea of people dying
before their time.
- There's always this ideal that if you blame somebody,
it will fix the problem as opposed to actually really
addressing the problem, which was,
you know, why are all these kids
who are 16 to 18, feeling so despondent
that they have to take drugs.
- [Richard] And it got to the point where it was,
it was almost like, a panic.
- It kills that whole era of photography all together.
All the young talent, that are no longer working
because they can't find work because,
okay, we cannot do heroin chic
because advertising wouldn't stand for it.
Instead of nurturing these people, it all wiped out.
- Sometimes it's so much easier to say,
oh yeah, my friend died of a heroin overdose.
But, he didn't die of a heroin overdose.
He died of Cooley's anemia mix.
'Cause the amount of heroin that he did,
you and I, if I did that or you did that
or any one of my friends done that amount,
they wouldn't pass away.
- As tragic as his death was,
his life to me should really be a celebration
and it shouldn't be about drug use.
That's the irony of it all,
that that's what's being talked about all the time
when it was such a brief part of the totality
of the relationships and the totality of the art
that was being created.
I'm so grateful that for the short period of time
that he was here on this planet,
that I got to partake in the beauty of his heart
and his soul.
- Davide represented an era whether he liked it or not,
he did become a poster boy.
I received hundreds of letters from all over the world
from young kids who were shocked that he had died
and wanted to know more about him.
People writing me that his passing helped them
because they felt that Dave was like them.
Just a normal kid, who was creative and got caught up
and they'd stop doing drugs because of Dave.
His passing saved so many people.
- But, you know, you know about his work.
He changed your life.
He changed my life, he changed a lot of people's lives
and he will continue to do so.
And people will continue to ask questions,
which is, I think, the most important thing.
It's not all black and white.
It's not this and it's not that,
it's not one way or another, it's everything put together
to make a person real.
And I think that's what Davide was always searching for
was the real, real people, like he called them,
you're real people, you're good people.
That's all he wanted in his life
was to be surrounded by real good people.
And I think he was.
- I think Davide's work was really a reflection of his time
and his generation and a group of kids that were growing up
and emerging in New York City.
Was very young, it was like, at the beginning
of his career, was like, really the first sprouting
of the seed.
- [Man] What is it that you like about documentaries?
- Basically, like, trying to capture somebody's life
and somebody else's life but at the same time
they're all close to you.
Kind of like, that quote in a book called like,
I'll be your mirror.
You know, like, everything you do reflects on me
and then I have it, you know?
It's kind of like looking in the mirror, pause,
and there it is and it's not going anywhere
because you just have it right there.
You pause time and it's just fricken' amazing.
It's really rad.
- [Man] Yeah, I'm gonna pause time for a second.
- What does that do?
["Davide's Song" by Steve Sutton]
♪ The sound of your laugh
♪ The turn of a phrase
♪ The way that your smile lit up your face ♪
♪ Your changing mood and you're in pain ♪
♪ Stubborn ways threw us all insane ♪
♪ People you touched, stories you told ♪
♪ You looked so young but you seemed so old ♪
♪ I remember you, Davide
♪ I remember you far too well
♪ Every day without you
♪ Well, it's a living hell
♪ It's a living hell
♪ The way you slept all day
♪ Gone all night
♪ The way you always thought that you were right ♪
♪ That mess in your room
♪ And the loud headphones
♪ The way your friends used to call nonstop ♪
♪ The slang that you used
♪ The way that you dressed
♪ You wanted everyone to be impressed ♪
♪ I remember you, Davide
♪ I remember you far too well
♪ And every day without you
♪ Well, it's a living hell
♪ It's a living hell
♪ The way you loved to cook
♪ Cameras come for you
♪ This feeling you have in everything you do ♪
♪ The way you loved to look
♪ The way you loved to ski
♪ The way you loved the fish and ride waves in the sea ♪
♪ The photos you took
♪ The paintings you made
♪ The stories they tell will never fade ♪
♪ I remember you, Davide
♪ I remember you far too well
♪ And everyday without you
♪ Well, it's a living hell
♪ It's a living hell
[acoustic guitar solo]
♪ Well, I remember you, Davide
♪ I remember you far too well
♪ And everyday without you
♪ Well, it's a living hell
♪ It's a living hell