Published in Life & Style Mexico

April 2008

Santé d’Orazio was just another kid making ends meet at Macy’s department store before Andy Warhol gave him a job at Interview magazine and launched him into the fabulous world of fashion. 25 years on, the man that undressed everyone from Christy Turlington to Sharon Stone and Axl Rose in some of the sexiest images of our time says it’s time for change and a little more substance. Today he’s trading glamour mags for sophisticated galleries, and persuading the world that his phenomenal images of a naked Pamela Anderson are to be taken seriously. How seriously? And anyway, is it really art? We talk to the guy with the world’s best job for a little more insight, and some juicy peripheral tales to boot.

You started life as a painter. How did you go from oil on canvas to shooting nude supermodels for fashion glossies?

I initially studied photography just to help the language of my painting: I studied with a photographer called Lou Bernstein, who lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn. He had to be one of the great street photographers in the New York school, and he wasn’t so well known because he didn’t believe in the commercial side of things. He worked at a camera store during the week, then at weekends he went out and took pictures. He didn’t really teach me photography, he taught me philosophy, and a way of seeing the world, and recognising yourself through good and bad, light and dark, horizontal and vertical, and diagonal lines. They are all telling about your personality. I actually have a picture that he took of me when I was about eight years old, rolling in a tyre down the street in Brooklyn.

Was move from painting to photography a practical measure?

Yes: when I got out of school, I painted for a year, but I had to support my mom and the family, so I ended up working as a photographer at Macy’s Department Store. Four years later, I got my first Vogue job in Milan and things started to roll. I figured I’d just do it a couple of days a week and paint the rest of the time, but things don’t work out that way. (laughs) I spent about 2 years on and off in Milan with Italian Vogue and Italian Bazaar, before I came back to New York in 1983 and Andy Warhol gave me my first job with Interview Magazine.

Did you feel like a sellout, a kid out of art school with such highbrow training, suddenly submerged in the world of fashion?

I think I cried four out of five days a week! I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to be there. Even in my tenth year of doing it, I really felt I’d let myself down, because I couldn’t develop my painting. But those are really good lessons. You can say ‘Oh, I could have done that…’ but you didn’t, so now you have to move on and believe in the things that you’re doing now. That’s how I work.

In terms of fashion photography, when were you finally able to say, ‘this is great, this is what I want to be doing’?

I never have! I’d say I only embraced the fact that I was a photographer quite recently, in the last 8 or 10 years. And that’s not to make less of any of the work that I did, it’s just that I had a different vision for myself. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve started doing work more geared towards the art world, involving concepts and points of view that are more philosophical, that deal with symbolism, mythologies, and things that have more substance to me. If I wasn’t doing this, I’d probably still be down on myself.

So what was the turning point from fashion back to art?

I did a book on nudes of Pam Anderson, which was called ‘Pam: American Icon’. The symbolism behind that was the female deity emerging as the pinup of our culture, like Marilyn Monroe was to Warhol. Richard Prince and Jeff Koons wrote an introduction for the book. They had done paintings and photographs of Pam, and I included those in the foreword as well as one of Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’s. So that was a big deal.

Wasn’t that job originally commissioned by Playboy?

Yes, and it was canned.

Why?

It was a 2-day shoot. All the pictures were done on the first day, and that night we got a little wild, and Pam never showed up the next day.

I dread to think…!

We got way out of control. There was a lot of tequila, and it got very naughty… (laughs) She was chasing me around the pool, naked, at the Chateau Marmont at about 3 o’clock in the morning. I was actually running away: she was nuts! I was dressed and she wanted me to come in the pool. She said, ‘You’re coming in, I’m gonna get you!’ I think I circled the pool about three times thinking to myself, ‘my friends will never believe this – I’ve got Pamela Anderson running naked behind me and I’m not going to let her catch me!’

So are you and Pamela friends now?

Yeah, yeah! She didn’t talk to me for a little while, though. I think she was more embarrassed than anything.

So why didn’t Playboy want those shots? They were pretty amazing…

Because pictorially, they found them too conventional. They felt there was not enough variation in terms of locations. I did an entire book from that one-day shoot and it became a major hit, sold and exhibited in galleries and museums, and endorsed and supported by Jeff Koons and Richard Prince. So I was vindicated, you know? I thought, ‘You bunch of fuckheads: these are great pictures.’ And after all the press I got, Playboy finally wanted to print them, and they did because they had the rights to.

So when you were working for Andy Warhol, were you a part of the whole ‘Factory’ scene?

I wasn’t part of any of the scenes. I think I socialised four or five times with Andy. He used to go on blind dates with the writer Tama Janowitz: Andy would pick a guy for Tama, and Tama would pick somebody for Andy, and one night I was Tama Janowitz’s blind date. So I hung out with Andy – we went to the Playboy Club together and then we went to a Brazillian music event, Sounds of Brazil.

Was Warhol fun to be with?

I wouldn’t consider Andy fun. He was odd. But you were thrilled to be around him. He only gave one-word answers to everything like ‘gee’ and ‘wow’. But here was a whole aura and a whole circle and everything seemed to move around him. I never took a picture of him though, because I always thought Andy would live forever.

Andy was all about icons, like Marilyn, like Elvis. Did that have much of an influence on you?

It took a lot more time to really understand the meaning and the value and the significance of Andy’s work. Now I understand it in the same vein as I approach the Pam images; there living icons today that are really symbols that replace ancient icons. Marilyn Monroe, symbolically, is like the divine feminine. And so she replaced the Madonna, and the Madonna replaced Venus, Venus replaced Diana, Diana replaced Isis, and ultimately Mother Earth. The figures change, but the symbol remains the same.

In Warhol’s case, he basically replaced the ancient objects of worship with the modern objects of worship. People then subconsciously used words that supported that, like describing her as a ‘Screen Goddess’; that’s what your subconscious is responding to. She is a goddess, she is the eternal feminine.

That’s the important thing to understand: all the icons that I or other people shoot today are basically portraits of us and the culture we live in. The images that are around today will tell future generations who we are. We’ve only learned about the ancients because of the art that they left behind. 200 years from now, you’ll look back at Warhol’s work and you’ll know what the consciousness and the psyche of that culture was all about.

It encapsulated a moment?

Yeah. And every artist, every good artist, will have something to add to that.

Do you ever come across people who misinterpret your intentions, who accuse you of objectifying the female body and setting unattainable role models for young women?

Oh all the time! I’m like, (impersonates arrogant tone) ‘Fuck you, wanker! Get lost!’ (laughs) No, seriously, what am I going to say to that? I used to be very defensive about it, but I’m not any more. How can I explain this to them? I’ll become a wanker to them: ‘Yeah, sure, the divine, right. You just want to get laid!’

Sure, that’s all I’m doing it for.

Joking aside, there are a lot of men out there who would kill to be doing what you do…

Definitely! I’m not complaining!

How do you plan your shoots?

They’re all intuitive. It’s not preconceived, or the preconception might be a place or a few objects. If it’s a nude, I use things that inspire to get to the nude, to make someone comfortable. I’ll never get to a shoot and just say to someone, ‘OK, get your clothes off!’ That would be bad! It works for some people but it wouldn’t work for me.

So do you discuss with your models beforehand if they’re going to get naked?

I really nurture the situation.  And once I have that camera in my hand, it’s really… But I’d rather have the photograph: usually it lasts a lot longer than a relationship does. (laughs) It’s just not worth it! And the thing is, I’m still in awe. To have a camera in front of any one of those girls at that moment – I’m in awe. It’s not lustful, it’s an act of nature, it’s an act of God. It’s like ‘Oh my god!’ you know? It doesn’t come from your groin. And something else takes over.

What is that ‘something else’?

It has to do with creating a language. It has to do with collaborating with the subject to create an image that evokes something, whether its sensual, or a mystery, or whatever it is. Ultimately, it’s trying to bring life the inanimate piece of paper that it’s printed on. There’s a spirit in there, it’s alive. I think that’s what all art is.

How do you get someone to open up to you?

You have to open up first, and then you inspire some trust. Obviously, now, I have a body of work to back me up, but I still have to make someone feel comfortable about being nude.

How different is working with men from working with women?

It took me a while to learn to shoot men well. Later on, I realised I had to shoot men in the same way as I saw myself, to use their masculinity as sex appeal. For example, walking down the street in a big overcoat, like Al Pacino at night in New York; De Niro smoking  a cigar and blowing some rings; Jonny Depp with a towel around his waist after coming out of the shower, just smoking a cigarette. It’s sexy.

And what about Axl Rose? How did you get him to take his clothes off?

I still don’t know! After he did it, he flipped out! He said, ‘I fuckin’ took my clothes off for a guy, what the fuck?’ I told him, ‘RE-LAX! It’s not like I touched your willy or something.’ We laughed about it. I got away with that, though I don’t know how.

Who was the person to shoot?

As far as the models go it was Stephanie Seymour. I always loved shooting her. She had this innate sensuality – sexuality - that was beastly. She could seduce a truck; she could seduce anything, without even trying. Men, women, children - everybody was floored by her. She just had this energy, so she made my life easy, in terms of getting it on film. And I always loved working with Julia Roberts, she’s a sweetheart: good-natured, generous, smart.

How friendly are you with the models you shoot?

I’ve known those girls like Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford since they were 15 years old. I was breaking ground for myself as a photographer when they were just beginning, so they were all friends of mine. Christy, Naomi, Linda, Stephanie: they’d come over Friday night and leave Monday morning. Eileen Ford would only let Christy out with me, which was a big mistake! (laughs) We’d always have to watch her. She was 15 or 16 years old…

Was she pretty wild?

Yes. We all were! We’d be looking for Christy in the club, and there she’d be, on the tallest speaker, dancing. She’d be dancing along, then all of a sudden she’d stop, throw up, and then continue dancing! That’s how life was – it was all fun and all cute, though.

Does your job ever encroach on your personal life, or vice versa? It must be pretty hard to tell your partner you’re off to shoot naked supermodels.

If you have someone who can’t trust you, then forget it. Once somebody interferes with my work, I gotta go. My ex-wife was the only woman who came home one day and said to me, ‘Sante, I saw this girl who’s so gorgeous, with a body to die for; you have to shoot her!’ So I married her, because that’s what’s great: it’s supporting you and loving you and trusting you. I never found another person like that again.