NEW YORK — Gray Sorrenti readily admits she was a “wild child.” At 17, she had a habit of zooming around the city on street-illegal dirt bikes with one of the cafeteria workers from her Upper West Side private school.
But the afternoon joyrides became more than acts of teenage rebellion, kickstarting a project she’s been working on for the last eight years: documenting the “bike life” subculture that’s grown up around mostly Black and Latino riders “popping wheelies” on dirt bikes and ATVs on city streets from New York to California.
Harlem, where “bike life” has long been big, was a world apart from her childhood home in Riverdale, a tony part of the Bronx, where she grew up the daughter of star photographer Mario Sorrenti and artist Mary Frey. But when Gray wanted access to Harlem’s dirt bikers, she dove in headfirst.
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“Most white people that come out to this part of town will be spooked, but she’s a daredevil like us,” says Freedom, the mononymous father of bike life. “It started with a documentary, but over time I became an uncle to her.” Gray has returned the affection, inviting “Free” to Sorrenti clan gatherings. Once, when the cops confiscated bikes belonging to some of her “brothers and sisters,” she went to the police station with cameras rolling.
Now 23, Sorrenti is one of fashion’s fastest-rising image-making talents, with ad campaigns for the likes of Loewe, Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein under her belt, as well as a slew of celebrity covers. But whether she’s shooting Rihanna, Beyoncé or Jennifer Lopez, she approaches her subjects as if she’s taking a photo of a friend.
“It’s more about a relationship that you’re building and trying to figure out someone and finding out who they are and what they’re about,” Gray explains. “I try to capture people for who they are and what they feel inside.”
“There’s truth in the characters depicted — it’s as simple as that,” says Michael Amzalag, half of the graphic design duo M/M Paris who gave Sorrenti her first commercial break, shooting Loewe’s Paula’s Ibiza campaign in 2018 when she was 16. “We thought it was good to have somebody very young and fresh who would have a very candid and unfiltered representation of what partying is all about in the Mediterranean for her generation.”
Sorrenti was born at home in Tribeca. When the nearby Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, her parents grabbed 9-month-old Gray, along with brother Arsun and dog Guru, and ran up Broadway to escape the devastation. Their apartment was rendered “unliveable” and the family eventually re-settled in Riverdale.
Sorrenti took to photography early. At 13, she got her hands on a Pentax K1000 and began taking pictures of her friends — many of whom were creatives — on the streets, in their homes, in nightclubs, at anti-Trump protests and at rowdy guerilla parties at once-famous, then abandoned Canal Street art store Pearl Paint.
By the time she was 16, Gray had created a body of work that captured New York’s Gen-Z culture much in the way that Ryan McGinley and Larry Clark had done for millennials and Gen-Xers. She caught the attention of Mood Board magazine, then influential titles like Dazed, i-D and Document Journal. And after she scored the Loewe job, the commercial work kept coming. “My high school graduation was in the middle of Saint Laurent campaigns,” says Sorrenti. “I flew to LA to shoot women’s, flew back to New York to graduate, and flew back to LA to do men’s.”
“She’s really living the culture she is documenting and she’s friends with the people that she works with. It’s something that designers and creative directors really want to get a piece of,” says stylist and former i-D editor Alastair Mckimm. “What’s important in fashion is authenticity, especially for young people interested in fashion, culture and music. They don’t want people their parent’s age telling them what to like.”
Gray is no nepo baby. “I didn’t become a photographer because my dad’s a photographer,” she says.
But being a Sorrenti certainly hasn’t hurt. “Having grown up in a family that has some sort of success in fashion, does give you some sort of privilege,” acknowledges Gray’s father Mario. “But at the end of day, anyone can recognise if you have ‘it’ or you don’t, because that can only take you so far.”
Gray’s family sometimes figures into her creative process — and she figures into theirs: they have discussed creative concepts together, edited images together, even made music together.
Gray calls her mom if she needs to bounce ideas off her, because she’s an “incredible artist,” she says. “I ask [Gray] for help, too,” Mario adds. “What do you think of this? What do you think of this picture? Do you like this better? Do you like that better? It’s very mutual and something we enjoy sharing together.”
“It’s a nice situation when you work together,” explains Frey. “Everybody is growing from it, everybody is learning from it, everyone is developing from it creatively.” According to Mario, “we all rely on each other to stay grounded, to stay honest, to stay true, to have respect. You need to have a certain amount of ego to be creative, but you also don’t want that to take over your life because it can be very self-destructive.”
“We love fashion, but we see ourselves more as artists,” says Gray, who is set to publish her first book of portraits, — screenshots from Facetimes with “loved ones”— in September following a preview this spring at a group exhibition curated by Aaron Stern. “We feel a lot; we’re all very sensitive.”
Sorrenti is also in the final stages of editing hundreds of hours of bike life footage for her yet unnamed documentary. “Riding is the same thing as taking pictures, you have to be a part of it,” she says. “There’s no way you can just stand on the outside and get what you need to get. You need to immerse yourself — don’t be scared.”
