In her early teenage days, Gia avidly started to search for her own identity, having already tasted the first substances which would later cause her so much harm, and having been profoundly influenced by idols such as David Bowie. After being addicted to heroin, Carangis modeling career rapidly declined. The model also angled her face to cover up the bloating. Carangis parents separated in 1971. She later became infected with HIV and died in Philadelphia on November 18, 1986, of AIDS-related complications. Heres a newspaper clipping from the Edinburg Daily Courier, and is dated October 29, 1938. It became apparent that she had been sleeping outside in the rain and had been badly beaten up and raped. She was 26 years old. Early in 1982, photographer and close friend Francesco Scavullo improvised for what would be her last cover shot forCosmopolitan magazine. With most models who move around, you get bad stuff, Scavullo continued. Scavullo was quite taken with Gia: she didnt fit into any of the usual model categories. The pains that have burned me and scarred my soul, it was worth it, for having been allowed to walk where Ive walked, which was to hell on earth, heaven on earth, back again, into,under,far in between, through it, in it, and above.. High Fashion Photography. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Vogue Magazine July 1980 US Edition Gia Carangi Deborah Harry No Label at the best online prices at eBay! She even made a cameo appearance in Blondies Atomic music video where she appears jumping and dancing. In May of that same year, 21-year-old Carangi needed to get hand surgery because she had injected herself in the same place so many times that there was an open infected tunnel leading into her vein, her biographer Stephen Fried documented. '', Gia's story has been told before, most notably in ''Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia,'' Stephen Fried's 1993 biography. Throughout her short career, she appeared in the pages of Harpers Bazaar and countless other fashion magazines, on the covers of the Italian, British and French editions of Vogue, and even the cover of the all-important, career-defining American Vogue. Gia Carangi had blackballed herself from New Yorks agencies and although magazines gave her several last chances, the model could not pull herself together. She was briefly clean, and worked jobs selling jeans in a shopping mall in Pennsylvania and at a nursing home as a cafeteria checkout clerk, sleeping on friends and lovers sofas.