Early Kate

Mario Sorrenti’s photographs of his former girlfriend prove that intimacy can’t be faked

If you were the kind of kid who kept a diary, you’d probably like to ensure it remains in that cardboard box in your parents’ attic until the day the sun explodes. If you are photographer Mario Sorrenti, you might be less precious, given that your adolescent diaries are made up of images taken by you of your then-girlfriend, Kate Moss, in all her nubile, elfin beauty. Sorrenti’s tender, sensual photographs — which became the inspiration for the legendary Calvin Klein Obsession campaign which the pair shot together — have now been collated into a book, out this month. The text is minimal: Sorrenti explains how they met on a modelling job in 1991, and were inseparable for the following two years; but the imagery of Moss lying in bed, or skinny-dipping, or smouldering at her lover’s lens across a café table, cigarette in hand, speaks volumes.

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Kate (Phaidon) is published on 7 September

Mario Sorrenti’s candid snaps of Kate Moss capture her on the brink of supermodel stardom at the dawn of the Nineties