Sign-In
Cart
A Shot in the Dark: A Memoir
Hardcover
Publisher Price: $34.99
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: Sep 23 2025
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.92
Height: 1.24 Width: 9.28 Depth: 7.28
Language: English
A riotous, Fellini-esque memoir from the famous artist and fashion photographer whose work helped define the look of a generation. A Shot in the Dark includes nearly one hundred photos, spanning decades of D'Orazio's incomparable career.
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.
Also from
D'Orazio, Sante
Also in
Artists
Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News Into Art
Kendall, Joshua
Hardcover
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
Johnson, Victoria
Hardcover
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Iconic Films
Rapold, Nicolas
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Hardcover
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
Kurtz, Glenn
Hardcover
The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome
Morrissey, Jake
Paperback
Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired
Naumann, Francis M.
Hardcover
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
Rozzo, Mark
Paperback
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
Jones, Brian Jay
Paperback
Autopsy of My Former Self: A journey through grief, transformation, addiction, personal triumph, and purpose
Burse, Jermaine Danté
Paperback
Modigliani: Man and Myth - Biography and Works of Italian Painter and Sculptor Amedeo Modigliani
Modigliani, Jeanne
Paperback
Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator
Roy, Sandip
Hardcover
Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture
Thoreson, Trygve
Paperback
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin
Weschler, Lawrence
Paperback
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol [50th Anniversary Edition]: From A to B and Back Again
Warhol, Andy
Paperback
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: Art, Poetry, and the Imagining of a New World
Hoare, Philip
Hardcover
Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church's Greatest Work of Art
LaFarge, Annik
Paperback
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr: My Words, My Photographs
Parr, Martin
Jones, Wendy
Hardcover
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island
Monkman, Kent
Gordon, Gisele
Paperback
Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life
Griest, Stephanie Elizondo
Paperback
The Artist and His Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Public Museum in the United States
Webber, Diane
Paperback
House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed
Forden, Sara Gay
Paperback
Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life
Griest, Stephanie Elizondo
Hardcover
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
Laing, Olivia
Paperback
Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash - Revised and Updated 50th Anniversary Edition
Gilbert, Pat
Paperback