Who

An artist and photographer, Snow was the reigning bad boy of the downtown art scene until he died of a drug overdose in July 2009.

Backstory

The great-grandson of Dominique de Menil, heiress to the Schlumberger oil fortune and a major art collector, Dash Snow led the sort of rich-kid rebellious childhood every American aspires to. He was raised in the Village, but his antics landed him in a juvenile detention center at age 13; after his release at 15, he moved out on his own and started hanging around with a hell-raising graffiti crew dubbed "Irak." It was while shoplifting and tagging buildings with the other members of the group (like Dan Colen) that Snow first turned to photography at the suggestion of his friends—many of whom were featured in Snow's art-porn Polaroids of naked hipsters doing lines of coke and going at it in his apartment. (To wit: one of his more famous pieces, which is called "Fuck the Police," is a collage of headlines about cops with Snow's semen sprayed on it.)

One of the most talked-about artists on the downtown art scene—and a hero to pervy hipsters everywhere—Snow's work was exhibited at The Royal Academy in London, the Whitney, Deitch Projects, and the Saatchi Gallery in London. Unfortunately, his promising art career was cut short in July 2009 when the 27-year-old died of a heroin overdose at the Lafayette House hotel.

Family ties

Snow's aunt—his mother Taya's half-sister, that is—was Uma Thurman. His grandfather was Columbia professor Robert Thurman. His brother was Maxwell Snow, Mary-Kate Olsen's ex-boyfriend.

Personal

At the age of 18, Snow married Corsican-born artist Agathe Snow. They later split up, but never legally divorced and in July 2007, Dash's then-girlfriend, model Jade Berreau, gave birth to the couple's daughter, whom they named Secret Magic Nico. Snow lived in an apartment on the Bowery up until his death.

The look

Among other signature style flourishes, Snow had a tattoo of Saddam Hussein on his arm.