A Shot in the Dark: A Memoir

Whether or not you know his name, you know his work.

As one of the top fashion photographers in the industry, Sante D’Orazio played a seminal role in shaping how we define what it is to be beautiful, cool, glamorous, and hot. The résumé of A-listers he has shot includes top supermodels—Helena Christensen, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell, among others—as well as a myriad of actors, artists, and athletes, including Pamela Anderson, Prince, Keith Richards, Axl Rose, Sophia Loren, Mickey Rourke, and Mike Tyson. In this intimate, riotous, rough-and-tumble memoir, D’Orazio writes of his many adventures and how he fought his way to the top while navigating a life of sex, drugs, hustlers, and panic attacks.

But beneath the surface of glamour and glitz, we find surprising depth. D’Orazio informs his narrative with artful meditations on the tensions that have defined his career and life: between the sacred and the profane; the commercial demands of fashion photography versus his personal art and his true love of painting; the nature of light and the disabling darkness of mood swings; ’80s glamour versus “heroin chic”; the mystic presence of Saint Padre Pio and the bacchanalia of Studio 54—from cocaine to Caravaggio.

Along the way, the author weaves together a vivid story of the Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn where he grew up and, especially, of his overly dramatic mother. The author chronicles his deeply personal, often hilarious, and always entertaining journey as he comes to terms with how the pull of his mother affected his many relationships with women—and informs the bond he has formed with his own son.

A Shot in the Dark is a shocking, sexy, and surprisingly revealing memoir that pulls you into the many frames of life.