Mario Sorrenti Revisits His Photographic Diaries in New Paris Exhibition

Fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti zooms in on what feels essential about the person in front of his lens.

For the Naples-born, New York-raised Sorrenti, that often means paring things down to serenely sensual nudes. The immediacy and simplicity of those intimate portraits carry through to his solo exhibition at LSD Gallery in Paris. Curated by Aaron Stern, Mario Sorrenti Diaries, 1991–2000 brings together five hand-bound Xerox copies of Sorrenti’s photographic diaries, filled with photographs, contact sheets, handwritten notes, drawings, and personal ephemera.

The diaries look back at the experimental foundations of Sorrenti’s practice during the decade he emerged as one of the defining photographers of his generation. Using color Xerox machines, Sorrenti reproduced pages from his 1990s diaries and bound them by hand, giving his personal archive a new form. Nude portraits, serial studies, snapshots of everyday life, and handwritten reflections sit side by side, rendered in the gritty, high-contrast tones of the photocopies.

Beyond the diaries themselves, the exhibition presents enlarged color Xerox reproductions of selected spreads. Elsewhere, five video works show the diary pages being flipped through. Spread across the gallery, the enlargements and videos let visitors linger over a single spread or watch the images pass in sequence.

Now reimagined as a gallery and project space, LSD occupies a former Paris photographic lab. That history lends the exhibition another layer of meaning. In a space once devoted to making photographs, Sorrenti’s diaries turn attention to what happens to images after they’re made: how they’re copied, handled, and passed from one person to another.

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Mario Sorrenti Diaries, 1991–2000, curated by Aaron Stern, is on view at LSD Gallery in Paris through December 10, 2026.