Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Beyond the Lens is a podcast that takes you inside the minds—and behind the cameras—of the world’s most influential photographers. Hosted by Erika Katz, each episode dives deep into the untold stories, pivotal moments, and creative instincts that define a photographer’s eye.
From fashion icons and cultural legends to raw documentary moments, Beyond the Lens explores the image, the subject, and the magic that happens just outside the frame. Whether you're a photography lover or just curious about how great images are made, this podcast reveals what you don’t see—but always feel.
Erika Katz: Sante D’Orazio is one of the most influential fashion photographers of
our time. His images of supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss,
Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell helped define an era.
Over the years, he's turned his lens on cultural icons from Pamela
Anderson to Johnny Depp, Keith Richards, Mike Tyson, Prince, Janet
Jackson and so many more.
Capturing them in raw, intimate and unforgettable ways. His work has
appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, interview, and Playboy, and he's also
made his mark as a painter and filmmaker. Now, with the release of his
memoir, A shot in the dark, Sandy is pulling back the curtain on the
stories behind the image and the life that shaped them.
Katz: Hello, Sante. How are you?
Sante D'Orazio: Good to be here. Good to see you.
Katz: This memoir is so fascinating. What made you become a photographer. Because that wasn't really your
first passion,
D'Orazio: I was going to the Art Students League one day, and I had one of those
giant portfolios,this man, Lou Bernstein, was always Mr. Bernstein on the block. He always had his camera. And he said, you asked me one day he goes,
would you want to learn photography? And I thought it would be a great
addition to my painting. on weekends, I'd go with him to Coney Island, Washington Square Park,
the Botanic Gardens, wherever people gathered. And it was street
photography.
it was about the relationship of not just line, shape and form, but
the emotional impact of a moment. And I remember when I developed my
first negatives, they were all black and I was like, Lou, they're all black.
What do I do? He goes, look, you read the book. I'm going to teach you
how to see.
Katz: So when you say he taught you how to see, what does that mean?
D'Orazio: How to recognize a moment? Like Like, there's that great painting of
Michelangelo and God in the Sistine Chapel, you know, right up there
with their point that they're about to touch.
Okay. That was the moment. If it was a little here, if they if they
weren't parallel. The angle, whatever it is, you got to recognize the
moment. And, so with the greatest impact, emotional impact.
in that moment that all has to be intuitive and going back to person
saying one, two, three. Taking the picture. I always say yes to that
one because that's probably the best moment because that too, the
energy sags a little at three.
It goes down. So you missed it. And if you have time to think about
your picture, where are you taking it? You missed the moment. It's
already two blocks away.
Kaz: You said something about Andy Warhol and Basquiat. You were working for
interview magazine, and then they died. And you said in the book it
was an end of an era, but then it was sort of the beginning of a new
one.
D'Orazio: Every ending is the prelude to a new beginning.
Katz: And so how is that a
new beginning for you? Because then we got into the supermodel era,
which you are very much a part of.
D'Orazio: I grew up with those girls.
Christy, Cindy, I was doing catalogs, Bonwit Teller catalogs, and, you
know, they weren't superstar at all, you know? We were all friends, and then our careers went skyrocket, There was no planning, no controlling that.
Katz: So there's a,story about Kate Moss that you talk about when you shot her in the
bathtub.
D'Orazio: She sat in the tub with her feet hanging out, reading a book from the
30s. Help your husband get ahead.
I thought that was humorous and, like, texture. And. But she wasn't
giving me. She was, I wasn't getting. And so, you know, you have to
figure something out. So I said, listen, Kate, I'm going to leave the
room.
Do you mind if I ask you? Can you go back into the tub without your
panties on? And she's like, okay,
Katz: Wow, She had to really trust you.
D'Orazio: So anyway, she took off her panties,she was like, what? Why did you having me take the panties off because you can't see.
I go they were for you and for me. For you to take them off. You felt
different, didn't you? She said of course I did. I go... That's the
key. You know. And so respectfully, you never see anything because the
tubs over here. But it was here. Yeah, it was here. She
felt more sexy or, sensual.
Katz: You did all these nudes, and they're not risque or voyeuristic. They're raw. They're they're beautiful. There's an emotion. How did
you get models to let their guard down and give you those moments?
D'Orazio: You know,
Look, some people have no problem walking around here on a set totally
nude.
If I need to, I'll start you with
a robe.
and, you can lay down flat so we're not seeing top or bottom.
Then we'll just take take it off your shoulders as I'm shooting, and,
you know, you peel it away because they're feeling more and more
comfortable. Their feeling,
the shot
they're feeling. Me.
Cindy is like, I think, I'm better off bareback, you know, just
nothing on.
Katz: There's a great story in the book about Keith Richards.
It was his solo cover, and you
were getting ready and and he walks in and you think you're going to
shoot him. But he wanted to sit back.
D'Orazio:
I knewall these guys would want to, like, chill for a minute. Have a drink,
you know, because, you know, even though they get shot a lot, it's
still like it's a process.
So I made a little room for him and I knew Jack, Jack Daniels. I had a
bottle.
I roll a few joints for him. Case, you know, whatever. And so, he
came in. That's straight where he went. And it was just me and him.
And so whatever he did, I did. You know, I was like, you know, I can't say
no, I don't drink. You know, I can't do that to Keith Richards. Yeah.
And but I was more than happy to have a drink.
So he pours a Jack Daniels and
I drank my Jack Daniels with him. He smoked the joint and. And I
smoked it.
I think we had for four of these tall glasses and two joints.
And then Keith gets up and he always has a knife in his pocket, you
know, in his pants.
And so he pulls out, he flicks the blade open.n
And then a little packet comes out and it's like, oh, another one for
me, two for him, three for me.
Now another Jack Daniels. And I'm like, oh my God.
He gets up and says
okay, I'm ready. Let's shoot. I can't get off the chair, I swear. I
mean, I, I partied hard, but I couldn't get off the chair. So I
managed to get to my assistants. I said, guys,
You gotta help me make sure the camera's, like, in the right
direction.
And,
I managed to take some of the best pictures ever.
Katz:You photographed Johnny Depp in that iconic photo of him. What was
Johnny Depp like?
D'Orazio: Johnny Depp was the essence of cool. At that time, he was, like, really hot.
He had to go take a shower because I don't know where he came from,
and he had to take a shower. So there's a shower there.
And He came out of the shower
with every girl's fantasy. Just a towel around
bottom and his,
motorcycle boots untied. All right. And there happened to be one of the
owners had a muscle car in the garage, and I had lifted the garage
doors because that's how the studio worked. And there was the muscle car
and Johnny's chain smoking.
And while he checked out the car. All right, that's the shot.
And that's how it happens, you know, you got to be aware of it. You
know, you're, as a
photographer, you just have to keep your eyes, let things happen,
The best shots, even on set, are the shots in between what the subject
thinks at the moment is, you know, because otherwise it becomes
everybody else's picture of them.
Katz: So with Arnold Schwarzenegger, was it the same way? Or was it more planned?
D'Orazio: He's a different kind of You know, he almost comes off more formal than, I guess, the European
thing. Yeah, yeah, but at the same time, he's lighting up a
Cohiba or something like that. When it was illegal to have, he had
boxes in his trailer. And so that tells me that, you know, he's he's
got a little bit of, a renegade in him.
And that's what I tried to pull out.
Katz: And John Travolta?
D'Orazio: It's like, we were cool, but he said I'm not
dancing.
And then
I had music on and he's not moving. But,
you know, a song came on I go, come on, man, you got to
do that for me. And then you just, of course, look for you. I do that
for you, of course.
And he's dancing for me, you know. And so I get and you have just the And so I get and you have just the
greatest things.
Katz:
And was it the same with Mike Tyson with the Tiger.
D'Orazio: Oh Mike Tyson my
god. Oh my God. That was crazy.
he took his shirt off and he's all smiling. He's throwing some
punches, and then he just let me get let me get whatever the frigging
tiger's name was, you know? Oh, and so the tiger comes over and he's
wrestling with it. He's got his arm around. And that's
the shot.
Katz: You did this great shoot with Christy Turlington in Montauk. Can you
talk a little bit about that?
D'Orazio:
I was not a fashion photographer when I entered the business, I didn't
really know much about fashion, but I knew from all my life drawing
and my painting experience.
I knew nudes and,
I would assign myself something for Italian Vogue that they didn't
know they were going to print. Yeah. So I have Christy, I have Cara,
who was later my wife. And those two grew up near each other and
California. And so we went to the Panoramic View Hotel, which I love,
the old Montauk Highway next door to Gurney's and,
they hung out nude
and came out of the shower and came out nude, sat on the bed. So she's
got a towel on her head, you know, and then she sits in a comfortable
manner and boom, I've got a shot.
do a nude and I'll just step out and lay,
down on the bed and get comfortable and I'll come in and then you tell
me.
And so, I came in, she was laying down. And that's the classic.
that's a forever picture.
Katz: You spent a lot of time in Montauk with pier beer, Julian Schnabel.
Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?
D'Orazio:
Julian was renting for the summers. The Warhol estate.
That was three large,
fisherman's cabins.
And they're gorgeous, though, but not not in the polished sense in the
old world, you know, down to earth sense. But
Julian would bring in his Picasso and leave it there. He would bring his Warhol,
Down the road next door to Avedon was Peter Beard's home.
something in his dark room in the basement lit up the place, and the
entire thing burned down except the chimney.
So he lived in the caretaker's house the rest of his life,
I said, Peter,
let me
blow up and print some your iconic graphic images here because I was
like, you got to do a book.
I made him a set of 12 each of 12 images.
And when I got there, the doorbell rings- ding dong
Who is it? The mailman. And the mailman comes in. Steve, how are you doing?
I have a drink and he's like, no, I'm working. He's like, okay,
come in- have a print. So he signs one of the prints I just made for
him. To the mailman.
Well, I've got nowhere to put it. Fold it up a few times because
they look better distressed,
so that's Peter, that's Peter. Julian is still is in my book, one of
the grand masters of painting and also later, filmmaking.
I always saw him as, big brother that I didn't have. And he also
reminded
me of my father.
He was grand in his own way. But bordering on, pompous, sometimes bordering
on, grandiosity at times, thats my father. But I'm also describing
Julian. And so I was used to that. Other people couldn't stand him for
it. You know, you walk into a museum. My paintings should
go there, you know, or walk into your house and rearrange your
furniture.
Katz: Is everybody photogenic? Is it the photographer or the model?
D'Orazio:
You have to find it as a photographer, you know, you have to find
something in them and not compare it to someone else's looks,
you're an individual that I'm photographing. I'm going to find
the best possible angle for you.
The best emotional moment
and make you
the
best you've ever looked.
I'm always proud of someone telling me, oh, my God, I've never seen
myself that way.
When I shot Sophia Loren, it was like something just this angle over
here.
Katz: Do you do you have a favorite?
D'Orazio: My greatest success was with Stephanie Seymour as my muse.
And it was funny because other photographers had difficulty in
shooting her.
Bruce Weber once said to me, he's like, I have no idea how you do that
with Stephanie. I mean, every picture I see is incredible and I can't
take a good picture of her,
Stephanie has this natural quality.
And I basically was able to feel it
and capture it on film.
Katz:Is there something distinctive that would say it's yours?
D'Orazio:
I can't tell you because they're my pictures. I can tell you what
people have told me, that I can tell you pictures from a mile away.
It's in it's in the essence.
It still carries that same vibe I had with her.
To share with you. That's the picture,