Mario and Gray Sorrenti mine the ocean for inspiration in their first shoot together

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18th Oct 2019

Boundless inspiration lies under the depths of the sea. Just ask renowned photographer Mario Sorrenti (who lensed cover star Margot Robbie for Vogue‘s September issue) and his daughter and up-and-coming photographer in her own right, Gray Sorrenti.

The father and daughter photographers partnered with La Mer to journey through the ocean and document their findings, detailing vignettes of their relationship along the way. Traveling to Spain and St. Barths, the pair descended on these shorelines to shoot the surrounding environment and give context to their redesigns of La Mer’s highly coveted Crème de la Mer jar, an element that bound the experience together and tethered the ocean to La Mer’s famous miracle cream, which features sea kelp among its hero ingredients. 

Capturing images that are at once distinctly personal and provoke collective experiences when we are one with the sea, the Sorrentis chat exclusively with Vogue about this unique partnership, the memories that tether each of them to the sea and why they mine the deep blue for inspiration. 

Tell us about your relationship to the ocean, and how this partnership with La Mer came about.

Mario: “I grew up by the Mediterranean Sea in Naples, so for me the ocean means going back to my childhood and remembering my experiences growing up in the ocean, living close to the beach and then having those experiences for us as a family. It became really important for us to have these experiences by the ocean every summer and Christmas.”

Gray: “The ocean was my first memory. It wasn’t even about where we were traveling to, I just remember being a baby and having my mom and my brother and my dad holding onto me; there was this love triangle. We were just in the ocean, keeping each other balanced. That’s the first memory I have – just feeling and being in the ocean. When I go into the ocean, it is this feeling of automatic repair.”

You feature a lot of candid footage of the ocean on your Instagrams. Given the ocean is a mobile, transient thing, do you enjoy capturing it in still imagery or does it inspire you to toy with film?

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M: “Part of the campaign was shot in Spain and the other part was in St. Barths, which are both places that we have a long history with. We’ve been traveling to both places with the kids since they were little, during spring break or Easter, so it just seemed like the most natural places to shoot.

We spent the month of August in Spain taking photographs, exploring different areas and locations each day. We took a lot of pictures and had a lot of material to work with. To finish the video portion we decided to go to St. Barths because the landscape is very similar to Spain, but also because it was another place we love going to. We kind of extended what we had already begun in Spain; we already knew where we were with the campaign and what we had started, what kind of light we had been playing with. We realised that the images we wanted to create were a little bit more abstract – the silhouettes, the contrasts – just so that the photographs would feel more universal and less specifically about us but more about the light, the photographs, the environment, the textures.”

G: “It was really nice because we were able to connect to the places where we got to spend a lot of time together, places that we grew up with, by the ocean.”

What do you find inspiring about the ocean, and why?

G: “The underwater world is one of the most beautiful worlds, not only what exists underwater but also the fact that we’re able to swim and be connected to the ocean. It’s that one moment when you dunk your head underwater and it’s completely silent and all you have is the moving current around you. That to me is being in the underwater world: when you’re at the surface of the ocean but you’re not yet above.”

M: “Some of the most memorable times were in Favignana where we’d go with the kids when they were little. This is an island where the Romans would go and mine, so the whole coast of the island was full of quarries and we would live in this tiny little fishing house, which was half ruins and half house. There was nothing else around, we would walk down the rocks and go into the water. There were so many places to climb and explore. The kids would just be free and really natural in the environment.”

Gray, you’ve grown up under the guidance of your renowned photographer father, Mario. What lessons have you learned from him?

G: “I’ve grown up in a house of artists and I’ve observed this my whole life. I didn’t really know that I wanted to be a photographer; it wasn’t something that my dad told me I had to do. It kind of naturally came to me – I guess one day I picked up a camera that my dad gave me and it felt good. I just couldn’t stop taking pictures. My first camera was a film camera so that’s how I started and still what I’m doing today. As soon as I got to high school, my school had a dark room and I spent hours and hours in there. It’s kind of the same way my dad’s love for it evolved – mine evolved in the same manner. I had him to watch and I was able to learn from his experiences.

When we started the La Mer campaign, we gave each other a lot of advice; we discussed and worked on this together. It’s kind of like we were evolving both of our ideas. I said something, he didn’t like it, he said something, I didn’t like it. Then we both liked what we said. But we did it very calmly.” 

How do you differentiate each other’s photographic styles?

M: “I think our work is very different. I think Gray’s work is very spontaneous and intuitive, she’s definitely connected in a very natural way to her peers. I’m also inspired by her energy. I think my work can become very studied and you sense the mature experience behind what I do. But I think we both have something very similar, maybe it’s the emotion and passion in both of our works.”

G: “As human beings on this planet, I feel like you and I were given some kind of power to be able to connect in a pure and natural way with our subject, where not only is the subject comfortable but we are comfortable too. There’s this natural balance. Not only are we creating an image, our subject is also creating that image with us. We are reading into the emotion and reading into the people, it’s something that’s natural. I think that’s the way you raised me, the way you raised yourself and the way that you’ve been raised.”

You both shoot in a lot of black and white. What captivates you about black and white photography?

M: “We decided to do black and white photography because that’s what we love doing and that’s our art, that’s the way we express ourselves and that’s our craft. There’s something that’s way beyond just being charming; it’s a historic part of our lives, the way we create and document. It was just natural because that’s what we create as artists.”

The rise of social media and technology has really transformed photography. What makes someone a photographer in the digital age?

G: “I see it almost like my own diary – like a social diary – it’s where I can put up and share what I love. It’s like, here are my pictures, here’s something I’m inspired by. It’s a folder of my inspiration.”

M: “I am totally pro-technology and social media, I think social media is a really interesting way to communicate with the world. I think there are a lot of incredible things discovered on social media, but there’s also a lot of trash on there so you have to be able to navigate it. It’s just part of our lives these days and I don’t think it’s going to go away. I actually enjoy it. I only use Instagram and I can barely manage that, so I don’t really get into anything else. Social media is a great way to put up the things that inspire you, to share the pictures and work that you’ve done.”

What is the best part of being a photographer and what is the worst part?

M: “My interest for photography started when I was 18-years-old. Just purely by chance I stumbled onto it; my friend was studying photography in school and she introduced me to it, she had a dark room at her place and everything. I didn’t really care for photography before that, I was much more interested in painting and sculpture – that’s what I was planning to study in school. But when we went into the dark room and started printing the photographs we took that day, I thought it was incredible and I loved it. From then I started doing it more and more, and became so obsessed by it that I remember saying to myself, ‘Wow. I think this is something I could do for my life.’

I had a lot of influences. At the time I was really inspired by the documentary book of Robert Frank, Mary Ellen Mark, and Danny Lyon. As far as fashion photography I really love the work of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Sally Mann, and the early 1970’s photography.

I was never properly schooled in photography, I just kind of taught myself. I started buying books and just went really deep in educating myself on the history of photography, the process, and the technique through experimenting. And now it’s been 35 years I’ve been taking pictures… so here we are.”