School gaze: Sante D’Orazio’s seductive muse

Volume One, Issue 32, April 27 - May 3, 2007

Sante D’Orazio and the subject of his latest series, model Kat Fonseca, at his Stellan Holm Gallery opening.

By Stephanie Murg

“You push the button, we do the rest,” proclaimed early ads for Kodak cameras. A reversal of George Eastman’s snappy slogan is the best way to describe “Katlick School,” an exhibition of new works by photographer Sante D’Orazio now on view at Stellan Holm Gallery. He pushes the button, you do the rest.

D’Orazio, 51, has made a name for himself by photographing big names, from Christina Aguilera to Catherine Zeta-Jones and everyone in between. He recently published an entire book of photographs of Pamela Anderson (complete with essays by Jeff Koons and Richard Prince). But this work is different. The lone subject is someone you’ve never heard of but won’t be able to take your eyes off of. Her name is Kat. She went to Catholic school and looks like trouble.

In 2005, 18-year-old Kat Fonseca arrived at D’Orazio’s Soho studio for a model audition, or “go-see,” that he didn’t want to hold. Her portfolio consisted of one photo. “I thought that she looked like a baby Bianca Jagger, and I was really impressed with her,” says D’Orazio. But he wasn’t shooting models at the time and not in the mood to set up a formal shoot, with the necessary stylist, wardrobe, and hair and makeup crew. “I was wondering how I could photograph her and yet do something for myself,” he says.

D’Orazio himself got a big break with a meager portfolio. After studying fine arts at Brooklyn College and under New York Photo League member Lou Bernstein, he went to Italy in 1981 with the desire to assist on shoots for Italian Vogue — or just to visit his family, whichever worked out. With a portfolio of drawings and “about ten different fashion pictures that looked like ten different people took them,” he ended up getting an assignment shooting nudes for the prestigious publication and has worked steadily ever since.

Fonseca, meanwhile, was living with her mother in Washington Heights and mentioned to D’Orazio that she had just graduated from Catholic school. Did she still have her uniform? She did. “OK, I’ve got an idea,” he told the aspiring model.

D’Orazio photographed Fonseca in her uniform — a prim white shirt, pleated chambray skirt, and white knee socks — in Soho near St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. With one hand clutching a speckled composition book and the other shoved in the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt, she peers down her nose at the viewer while leaning languidly on a metal fence. In the background looms a cross, small and out of focus.

“The Catholic school uniform has been a symbol for ages, and I wanted to see what I could do with it,” says D’Orazio, who infuses symbols and mythology into his work with varying degrees of subtlety. “Photographers like [Nobuyoshi] Araki and Helmut Newton, they’ve all used different kinds of symbols to depict the erotic, so what I tried to do here was photograph this girl without trying to provoke anything sexual while trying to go back to my roots of street photography.” The challenge was “to allow you as a viewer to become the participant in the erotic. I would have nothing to do with it.”

It was all something of an experiment. After the shoot, D’Orazio gave Fonseca some of the pictures for her modeling portfolio. She got an agent, and he moved on to other projects. Then a few months later, he spotted her on the dance floor at Hiro, a Meatpacking District hotspot owned by some of his friends. “I was kind of surprised to see her there,” he says. “So then I thought OK, let’s do another series.”

Expanding upon the initial idea, D’Orazio now photographed her at “home,” an apartment that looks like it could be out of 2007 or 1957, with aging appliances, honey-colored wood grain cabinetry, ripening bananas, and shelves filled with family photos and the spoils of sportfishing. Fonseca does her homework at the kitchen table and strikes pensive poses on the Formica countertops. A giant taxidermied marlin floats above her head.

A third series of photos followed a few months later, in the wake of another Fonseca sighting at Hiro. This time the venue was the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where D’Orazio had shot with Bernstein decades earlier. “This is where it started to change. She started developing an awareness of herself that she didn’t have initially,” says D’Orazio. “She was feeling more sensual and started to look a little bit more sensual.” With her composition book and backpack, Fonseca wanders amidst the cherry blossoms. Both are in full bloom.

The fourth and final series of photographs was sparked by a phone call a few months later. Fonseca was in D’Orazio’s neighborhood, having just purchased a pair of thigh-high stiletto boots at Chanel’s Soho outpost. He invited her over, ready to take a break from editing film. “She took the boots out of the box and put them on,” says D’Orazio. “They didn’t look good with her outfit so she took all her clothes off. So I just went and got my camera.”

Once D’Orazio developed all of the photos and reviewed them in chronological order, he realized that he had the makings of a book. “Katlick School,” published by teNeues last fall, includes 130 photos taken with a range of cameras (including a $20 plastic one), and Stellan Holm Gallery features 32 highlights. Groups of photos from each of the four shoots, all taken over the course of about a year, are on view. The first and third fill the front of the gallery, while the second and fourth occupy the rear exhibition space.

From a scowling schoolgirl prowling Prince Street evolves an unabashedly sensual creature lounging on a flocked velvet sofa, naked except for thousand-dollar boots and an armful of bangle bracelets. Chronicling such a rapid metamorphosis was a first for D’Orazio, and a pleasant surprise. “I’ve got pictures of Christie Turlington when she’s 15 all the way ‘til she’s 30, but not in any kind of narrative or symbolic form as this is,” he says. “This was totally unexpected. And it’s a lot more exciting.”

In the end, the photos of a Catholic schoolgirl (or at least an erstwhile one) dare the viewer to make their own associations and explore their own fantasies. “My hope was that you look at this, and the girl is not doing anything, but you’re forced to participate,” says D’Orazio. “That’s because of the symbolism, and it’s because of how beautiful she is. I just took the picture. Your imagination does the rest.”