LaChapelle told me that he was born in Fairfield, Conn., to Huguenot parents. His ancestors were Protestants who fled persecution in France in the 17th century to freedom in Canada.

Two decades ago LaChapelle stayed in a kibbutz and would hop on a bus to the Tel Aviv Museum. “I met Moti who was so welcoming I felt relaxed,” he said of Mordechai Omer, director and chief curator.

He was so taken with the warmth of the people of Israel and “their personification of living in the moment – at the beach, in the cafes, on the scooters. The way they embraced life was so different from anything I experienced.”

Earth Laughs in Flowers: David LaChapelle
An interview with David LaChapelle by Bill Kouwenhoven

Some years ago at the height of his fame as a fashion photographer, David LaChapelle had a brush with mortality and began to question his life, which had taken him from the wilds of Fairfield, Connecticut, in the 1960s, to the New York of Studio 54 where he met Andy Warhol along his path to become an artist during the 1970s, to being the go-to guy for Interview, Vogue, Tank, I-D and countless other magazines, with a number of important books including the influential LaChapelle Land (1997) and Hotel LaChapelle (1999), as well as innumerable gallery and museum shows.

David LaChapelle, lei, che tradisce nel nome l’origine europea di una famiglia ugonotta emigrata secoli fa dalla Francia in Quebec, ha scelto di vivere alle Hawaii. Perché? Mi piace immergermi nella natura, che in queste isole è davvero fantastica, e vivere secondo i suoi ritmi. La mia casa è una fattoria nella giungla, in mezzo alle vegetazione tropicale e agli animali. Qui, per esempio, sono diventato vegetariano, mangio verdura, uova, e soprattutto frutta: banane, noci di cocco, ananas, mango, papaie. Già da ragazzo vivevo nella natura, ma in una condizione di solitudine, mentre qui mi circondo di molti amici. Appena posso fuggo a Maui da Los Angeles, o da NewYork, dove posseggo altre abitazioni, che però amo molto meno.
Come sono dunque le sue case?

Young people, especially young art students, think Andy was sort of this Picasso figure in terms of popularity and success in the art world. That certainly was not true in America; critics during the last two decades of Andy’s life were really brutal to him. Many of the final pieces Andy presented didn’t sell at all back then—now, they’re breaking auction records. Pieces like The Last Supper, a series Andy was working on before he died—that was commissioned in Europe where they’d always loved him. Even my friends in art school at the time were like, “Oh, Andy’s such a has-been, he’s washed up…” They were always very dismissive, whether of his work or about the fact that he went out a lot. Critics didn’t think he was serious. He had a rough time in the art world, although Interview magazine kept him relevant and in the mix. All Andy ever wanted was a show at the MoMA, and he didn’t get that until two years after he died—and it was the biggest one-man show in their history, and people just walked around with their mouths open. In hindsight, people have come to realize how essential and genius Andy was.

Your new body of work features photographs of baroque flower arrangements. As someone who became famous photographing people, what draws you to this surprising new genre?

I love stories/narratives that can be found in the old masters’ still lifes. Every object and even certain flowers carry symbolic meaning. For me it’s about the “vanitas,” the idea of transitions in life, nature, and how they remind us of our own mortality, the brevity of life, and the beauty in each season.

A line stretched out of the gallery at Fred Torres Collaborations but it wasn't for Madonna. David LaChapelle's new photography show, "Earth Laughs In Flowers," is devoid of the celebrity images that made him famous. The painterly photos feature Baroque flowers surrounded by modern disarray such as pill bottles, cigarettes and cellphones.

A very tightly squeezed crowd, which included Courtney Love, Daphne Guinness, model Hana Soukupova and nightlife icon Amanda Lepore, mingled as Adele hits played (Mr. LaChapelle is a great fan.)

Fab 5 Freddy was happy to celebrate his old friend. The pair met on Mr. LaChapelle's first paid assignment as a photographer, when he was asked to photograph the graffiti artist. "Years later when we would meet he would say 'Oh my God, that was the first job I was paid to shoot.' I was like, 'Get the hell out of here!'" Fab 5 Freddy said. "We've been friends ever since."

GOING FOR BAROQUE...: Less than 24 hours before David LaChapelle opened his new exhibition at a walk-up gallery on New York’s West 29th Street, the photographer stopped by to see how things were coming along. The staff had hung the last of his large-scale, still-life Baroque-style flower photographs minutes before his arrival and LaChapelle walked around the room slowly, nodding in approval. If he was nervous about the Thursday night opening, he didn’t show it.

The press release about LaChapelle’s new series said it appropriates “traditional Baroque still life paintings,” but that doesn’t really do them justice. First of all, they are each 72-inches tall and it’s not just flowers and fruit shot against a black background. His flowers are wilting, some poisonous. He’s replaced classic accompaniments, such as a horn of fruit, with a Michael Jackson-headlined New York Post, sex toys, Cheetos and prescription pill bottles.

Time was, David LaChapelle’s hyperrealistic, slightly subversive photography was everywhere you looked. His portraits of everyone from Madonna to Hillary Clinton were mainstays on the magazine rack, and then—poof—after years of unparalleled success (and the release of a highly acclaimed documentary in 2005), he seemed to disappear from the public eye altogether.

“I did disappear,” LaChapelle says, back in New York briefly for the opening of his new show, “Earth Laughs in Flowers,” which opened at Fred Torres Collaborations gallery in Chelsea last night and runs through March 24. “I checked out completely. I bought a 25-acre farm in the jungle in Maui and lived there with two friends and some pigs. I needed to change my life.”

Last night, the art crowd gathered at the Fred Torres Collaborations gallery for Earth Laughs In Flowers, a new exhibit of still life photographs by famed photographer, David LaChapelle. At first glance, the photos feature expansive and lush flowers reminiscent of paintings by the Dutch Masters but, upon closer inspection, elements of LaChapelle's signature blend of wealthy excess and the grotesque are present: phallic doll parts, Cheetos, pill bottles and toilet paper peek out from fancy floral arrangements and mingle amid ripe fruit.


LaChapelle, who famously quit shooting fashion for magazines and moved to Hawaii in 2006 at what some might say was the peak of his influence, has clearly not lost any admirers. The packed gallery had people spilling down the stairs and into the street where a long line waited to get in PAPERMAG had the chance to talk to LaChapelle about his exhibit, about his decision to move off the grid and buy a farm in Hawaii and what he'd do if he got a call to photograph Newt Gingrich.

I ask if with the Earth Laughs In Flowers series he is scoping out a new direction in his fine art career. "This wasn't a strategic career move... it was intuitive. Baroque still lives were what happened to inspire me at that moment..As well as exploring the interplay between the medium of photography and the old master paintings."

'None of that, none of the money really matters to me. I've always had three prayers -- and they were answered: to make a living off my photography, to live in a cabin in the woods, and to be able to eat in Angelica whenever I wanted."

And he bursts out laughing.

His deep thoughts are perhaps surprising given that LaChapelle's photography has in the past been dismissed by critics as superficial and materialistic. Did that annoy him? "It did at the time, a little bit – and sometimes more than a little bit – but now, looking back, it's changing, and people are seeing things in the work today that they once weren't. With a little distance you can see that [the photographs] were about the choices America was making at the time. It wasn't condemning, it was done with humour and beauty."

Titled Earth Laughs in Flowers, this exhibition consists of 10 works of different dimensions, glazed C-prints shot from 2008 to 2011, which revisit the foundations of seventeenth-centrury art, in particular the Flemmish tradition, but also, for example, the mastery of Mario "de' Fiori" of the Roman baroque period and his floral still life. David LaChapelle has given life to opulent images, rich with brilliant, vibrant colors, which appear to be elsewhere, filtered, misty with a vanitas surface sensation, a meditation on the natural disintegration of things. Rich floral compositions of roses, mega-colorful baroque-looking tulips, lilies and calla lilies, which, in their own right, turn into convectors of the history of painting, dancing between their own beauty and the melancholy necessity of death.

The title Earth Laughs in Flowers comes from the poem “Hamatreya” (1846) by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), in which flowers articulate nature’s ridicule and contempt for human arrogance in the pretense to dominion over earth.

Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet,
Clear of the grave.”

The titles of the works refer to the cycles of the seasons and of life: Springtime, Late Summer, Early Fall, Deathless Winter, and Concerning the Soul. In typical memento mori fashion, the works invite us in, beg our self-reflection, and remind us to enjoy life before it’s over.

In Earth Laughs In Flowers David LaChapelle appropriates the traditional Baroque still life painting in order to explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity. Expectations of the still life are satisfied through the inclusion of symbolic objects such as fruit, flowers and skulls, but also upended by the insertion of everyday items such as cell phones, cigarette butts, balloons, Barbies, and a Starbuck’s iced coffee cup. This last effect is exacerbated by a tortuous disorderliness overwhelming the composition. The resulting photographs achieve a painterly, almost sculptural quality, thereby challenging the traditions of painting.

Continuing his beef with our celebrity-obsessed society, the surrealist photographer exhibits work inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry

From Tuesday February 14, the Robilant & Voena gallery in London will play host to a new series of works by American fine-art photographer David LaChapelle. The ten large-scale images, titled 'Earth Laughs in Flowers', will additionally be on display in Milan and at the St. Moritz Art Masters festival this month.

Arrivano freschi freschi da Los Angeles, saturi di colore e di dettagli - protesi, sigarette, flebo e carta igienica - i fiori con cui David LaChapelle definisce la sua sterzata. Dalle star allo stare con se stesso, dalla California più sfrenata alla quiete delle isole Hawaii, dove il fotografo più famoso al mondo, già associato a celebrities ed eccessi quantomeno scenografici, si rifugia appena può. Per esempio ora, prima di affrontare il debutto dei suoi bouquet con un tour in Europa. Dieci immagini, stampate maxi, quasi due metri d’altezza, tre le edizioni, tridimensionale l’effetto ottico, tripla la presentazione: Londra/Milano/Saint Moritz, a due giorni di distanza una dall’altra. Si parte il 13 febbraio in Dover street, galleria Robilant+Voena, per finire al Dracula Club, Saint Moritz, nella notte di venerdì 17, il 15 tocca all’Italia, sede milanese della stessa galleria. Intanto, l’artista è in mezzo alla giungla. E’ lì che lo raggiungiamo, nella sua casa hawaiana immersa nel silenzio, unica compagnia l’eco della cornetta.

Photographer David LaChapelle, most famous for his striking and surreal celebrity images, is now exhibiting a stunning collection of ten large-scale photographs ‘The Earth Laughs in Flowers’ in Dover Street, London. Bazaar speaks to the creator of these meticulous still lives about sexuality in springtime and why he’s now happier than ever before.

What was your inspiration for this collection?
I was inspired by a great love for Old Master paintings and still life - of vanitas - reminders that we’re here for a short time. The title [of the collection] comes from a line of a Waldo Emerson poem. It’s about the idea that man owns and feels control of the earth, lives on it, and then is buried in it. The earth gives back in flowers. Back when there were paintings and no television or radio, people would look at all these objects – which had symbolic meaning that told a narrative and stories - and that’s what I wanted to capture.

The dayʼs final presentation was eagerly awaited. David Lachapelle! Everyone was expecting slightly pretentious extravagance. We were going to show him, the King of Photoshop, what a “real” photo was. Every one was nicely surprised. Lachapelle was very much himself. Humble, funny, immensely cultivated, he shocked everyone! At the end of his interview, he showed us the making of his Pieta. When spectators realized there was NO photo manipulation involved, he triumphed!"

I was beginning to think the art crowd was slipping, losing something, maybe drying up. Hardly. The huge crowd that turned out for the opening night of David LaChapelle’s and Elaine Reichek’s show at 56, Bleecker Gallery wasn’t on bit dull, insipid or shriveled up. Everyone looked just the opposite: fluffy, ripe and in blossom. The place ablaze with personalized radical chic, but these weren’t hollow hipsters, these were people with actual substance inside their decorative shells. People were bandying their imaginations about and their art observations as well. No vapid spine-chilling trendies here, these were good-looking art-worlders. It struck me that here truly was the young avant-garde. So the crowd was here, and the art? That was here too.

A protégé of Andy Warhol, the celebrated photographer David LaChapelle is internationally known for taking the pop-art sensibility to heights Warhol probably couldn't have imagined. Whether you consider his extravagant celebrity portraits, fashion shots and elaborate tableaux to be works of imaginative virtuoso or over-the-top kitsch, they can often be as compelling as a car crash - a recipe for success that Warhol knew very well.

PRAGUE.- David LaChapelle (born 1963 in Farmington, Connecticut, USA) has ranked among the world’s most eminent photographers since the mid-1990s. His work has exerted an influence on dozens of other artists and over time, LaChapelle has evolved a style entirely his own, one which is recognizable at first glance. In the context of his exhibitions, the present show, entitled Thus Spoke LaChapelle and held at Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague, occupies a unique place. It is the first fully representative retrospective of his work, as it includes also his early works from the mid-1980s. His early photographs are only shown rarely, and the Prague exhibition is the first to present them in the context of the artist’s oeuvre thus far. The exhibition presents an extensive selection of LaChapelle’s work, surveying all of the seminal phases of his creative career. Still, the emphasis is largely on work created in recent years, when LaChapelle all but retired from fashion and advertisement commissions in order to revisit his artistic premises and independent work. The present exhibition includes all major works from this stage of his career, including the monumental pieces The Deluge (2006) and The Raft of Illusion Raging Towards Truth (2011).

„David LaChapelle nemůže být vnímán jako průměrný – buď ho zbožňujete, nebo nenávidíte. Ty křiklavé barvy! Ten odvážný humor! Okázalost a troufalost! Bizarnost bláznivých postav! Voyeurství! Šokující nápady! Šílené výjevy! Nehorázné kostýmy! Plast! Sex! Náboženské narážky! To vše je pro LaChapella typické a tím vším si vysloužil jak uznání, tak opovržení.“
(mono.kultur, 2007)

Fotil pro nejslavnější časopisy světa, pak přerušil natáčení s Madonnou a vrátil se k tomu, co chtěl dělat zamlada - umění.
Souhrn jeho prací bude od sedmého prosince k vidění v pražské Galerii Rudolfinum a ozdobou výstavy bude evropská premiéra díla The Raft.

Pražská Galerie Rudolfinum ve středu otevřela retrospektivní výstavu amerického fotografa Davida LaChapella, který patří od poloviny 90. let mezi nejuznávanější světové fotografy. Návštěvníci si na výstavě Tak pravil LaChapelle prohlédnou autorovy umělecké začátky, ale i jeho vrcholové velkoformátové snímky. Výstava probíhá do 26. února příštího roku.

Praha - Americký fotograf David LaChapelle osobně představil svou retrospektivní výstavu, kterou od středy do 26. února příštího roku hostí pražská Galerie Rudolfinum. Expozice nazvaná Tak pravil LaChapelle mapuje jeho začátky, nejslavnější tvorbu pro lifestylové magazíny i volnou tvorbu, ke které se vrátil v půli minulého desetiletí.

Zastupitel Jan Kalousek přijal včera na Staroměstské radnici světoznámého amerického fotografa Davida LaChapelle, který přijel do Prahy u příležitosti zahájení velké retrospektivní výstavy „Tak pravil David LaChapelle / Thus Spoke LaChapelle“, která se koná v Galerii Rudolfinum v Praze od 7. prosince 2011 do 26. února 2012 a která prostřednictvím více než 120 fotografií představí příběh jeho třicetileté kariéry.

After bringing his two-decade career in magazines to a close (during which time he shot the faces and figures of Hollywood’s A-list and pop stars like Madonna and Michael Jackson) LaChapelle opted for a quieter life in Hawaii, in what he called “a whole new chapter in my life” — his return to gallery work.

“I've taken the techniques I've learned in 20 years of magazine work and now come full circle and applied it to gallery work,” LaChapelle said.

Kýč nebo jen velmi realistické, provokativní umění? Galerie Rudolfinum dnes otevírá výstavu Tak pravil LaChapelle, která opět naláká desetitisíce návštěvníků, podobně jako před rokem Dekadence.now. A znovu vzbudí debatu, zda to, co ukazuje, není náhodou jen prvoplánovým, nabubřelým pozlátkem.

Americký fotograf David LaChapelle (1963) patří k proslulým západním autorům, jejichž sláva má počátky v osmdesátých letech v dosahu charisma Andyho Warhola, a rudolfinská prezentace je jeho první česká výstava. To může být argumentem pro všechny, kterým se nechce zdlouhavě obhajovat, proč se jdou postavit do řady před Rudolfinem.

His surreal, highly sexual, sometimes grotesque and over-the-top portraits of the world’s most talked about stars, including Michael Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton made LaChapelle a household name as a fashion and celebrity photographer. But throughout the press event, he expressed a desire to start over.

Provocative, surreal yet stunningly artistic; that’s how the works of David LaChapelle, 48, a renowned photographer are esteemed. But LaChapelle was surprisingly humble and soft-spoken, who openly shared his life story including his withdrawal from the world and his unadorned take on art.

LaChapelle’s signature hyper-realistic images with social messages has garnered him commission works from fashion and celebrity editorials. This exhibition will feature his recent artworks such as The Raft of Illusion, the site-specific installation Chain of Life and his most recent work, Gaia.

Burning Down the House, David Lachapelle's 1996 portrait of the fashion designer Alexander McQueen and his 'muse', style journalist Isabella Blow, at Hedingham Castle in Essex, has been purchased by the National Portrait Gallery.

Se me metió una abeja en el café la mañana en que debía entrevistar a uno de los artistas contemporáneos más relevantes del momento: el estadounidense David LaChapelle. Llegó a la Isla con motivo de su recién inaugarada exhibición “NosOtros: La humanidad al borde”, que reúne 50 obras en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) en Santurce.

"DECiA EL PINTOR SALVADOR DALI QUE EL SURREALISMO ES DESTRUCTIVO, PERO SOLAMENTE PORQUE DESTRUYE LO QUE CONSIDERA TRABAS QUE LlM ITAN LA VISION. EN EL CASO DEL FOTOGRAFO INTERNACIONAL DAVID LACHAPELLE, CONSIDERADO EL PICASSO DE LA FOTOGRAFiA, ESTE NO SOLO EXPLORA EN SUS OPUS LAS IRRACIONALIDADES Y FANTASiAS CONTEMPORAN EAS, SINO QUE EN LA BUSQUEDA DE UNA NUEVA LlBERTAD ARTisTICA, CAPTURA UNA REALI DAD JUSTO EN LA FRONTERA DE LA IRREALI DAD."

Algo de eso tiene la historia de cómo fue que David LaChapelle, uno de los artistas estadounidenses más aclamados y que trabaja con los principales museos y galerías del mundo, terminó aceptando entusiasmado la invitación a presentar una exhibición en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), lugar en donde -según se comentaba en los pasillos del museo- dijo sentir que “lo habían tratado como un verdadero artista”.

A portrait of the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen and magazine editor Isabella Blow has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). Burning Down The House by surrealist photographer David LaChapelle was originally published in Vanity Fair in 1997. The shot was with an article branding McQueen and Blow "The Provocateurs". NPG director Sandy Nairne said he was "delighted" to receive the work, which is now on display in the gallery.

The portrait was shot at Hedingham Castle in Essex in 1996 and shows McQueen dressed as a woman, brandishing a flaming torch. Both subjects were dressed in clothes designed by McQueen, while Blow was also wearing a Philip Treacy hat.

At the time of the shoot McQueen, who passed away last year, was just 27 years old and had recently debuted his first couture collection for the House of Givenchy. Blow, 38 at the time of the shoot, was largely credited with discovering McQueen.

A double portrait of the late Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow is now on show in the UK for the first time at the National Portrait Gallery. The picture, entitled Burning Down The House, was taken by David LaChapelle in December 1996 at Hedingham House in Essex, and first appeared in Vanity Fair.

"This is a fabulous fantasy image of an exceptionally creative pair - Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow - taken by a great innovator in contemporary portraiture, David LaChapelle," said National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne. "It has become an iconic image."

At the time the picture was taken, McQueen was just 27 years old and was still working at Givenchy. Both are wearing creations by the designer himself, with Blow sporting a Philip Treacy hat.

The image was bought by the National Portrait Gallery with the financial help of McQueen and Blow's long-term friend Daphne Guinness, The Marrakech Gallery Foundation and artist management company Fred Torres.

David LaChapelle began his successful career as a professional photographer for Interview magazine, the publication founded in 1969 by Andy Warhol who discovered LaChapelle. Prior to being scouted, he had been exhibiting his work in New York City galleries, following a stint studying at the North Carolina School of Arts. At Interview, LaChapelle began shooting the stars of the day, capturing on film some of the most famous faces of the times.

A lot of Christians might feel shocked when they first encounter the work of David LaChapelle. A renowned photographer and film-maker, LaChapelle is equally ranked among The Top Ten Most Important People in Photography in the World by American Photo as he is sometimes scornfully called the king of ‘kitsch’ or, bluntly, of ‘bad taste’ by his adversaries. The artist isn’t too proud to answer his critics:

“I use pop imagery – that’s my vocabulary; glamour and beauty is my vocabulary. They get angry when you use pop imagery (the things that are accessible) to talk about anything other than the completely superficial. And you know what? Let ‘em be angry … I’m into narrative and clarity. I’m not into obscurity. I’m not into people having to read and research – I’m just into the title, and the image, and the image being the language. If people don’t want to take ten seconds to look at a picture and put it together, I can’t help that, but I stand by it and I love it. And I will keep doing it. And I ain’t going away.” (Taken from an interview for Dazed and Confused, March 2010, by Anna Carnick).

Map World by Jenna Sauers

One of the top international drawcards at this year’s Hong Kong Art Fair, surrealist photographers David LaChapelle discusses organic farming, giving up fashion for art and being censored in China.

For more than 20 years, beginning in 1984 when Andy Warhol asked him to shoot for Interview, David LaChapelle’s brand of candy-coloured, celebrity-flavoured photographic bombast littered the pages of popular magazines. If he wasn’t shooting models snorting diamonds like cocaine for Visionaire, he was photographing L’il Kim, her naked body stamped with Louis Vuitton logos for Rolling Stone, or, for Vanity Fair, he was taking pictures while a topless, 19-year-old Paris Hilton gave him the finger in her grandmother’s mansion. Addiction, consumption, fame: LaChapelle took contemporary America’s most lurid obsessions (or neuroses) and blew them up to ludicrous proportions, then recorded the results with the ambivalence of a madcap documentarian.

The Cult of Beauty
By Napoleon Perdis

What exactly is beauty? It's impossible to define in any succinct way; beauty means different things to different people, cultures and eras. My friend and editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia, Kirstie Clements, is constantly pushing and redefining the notion of beauty. To me, it's Vogue's unofficial MO. Kirstie introduced me to the concept of "beautifully grotesque," a term coined in what has become one of my favourite coffee table tomes, Extreme Beauty in Vogue (Skira), which looks at some more challenging notions. It came to mind as I visited the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles last weekend to see the Beauty CULTure exhibit (catch it before November 27).

A typical month in the life of legendary photographer David LaChapelle is a lot like the one that started the morning after this visit -- involving a flight to say, Prague or Istanbul, thence to Hong Kong or Guadalajara, with a stop in Paris or Miami en route home to LA, along the way opening one or more hugely anticipated new exhibitions, and/or shooting a gorgeous and expensive fashion story, and/or accepting invitations to the most fabulous parties you can think of.

www.lacanvas.com

At Lever House, LaChapelle comes full circle, with an installation that resurrects work addressing the AIDS crisis from his 1991 Liguori show, while mixing it with his current interest in contemporary allegories. Two large circular pieces, adhered directly to the lobby gallery’s windows, present hundreds of cutouts: tinted images of nude models, identified as Adam and Eve, metaphorically swimming under a giant microscope. Chain of Life links 14,000 torn-and-stapled photographs of nudes, shifting from shades of light to dark red, as hanging chains that traverse the room. Meanwhile, the massive collage The Raft fantastically riffs on Théodore Géricault’s 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa, which depicts struggling survivors of a shipwreck. Constructed by cutting, tearing and gluing staged photos together with found materials, The Raft—along with the other works in this crafty show—reveals LaChapelle at his creative best.

Where to Catch Free Art in New York
By Jennifer Ceaser

David LaChapelle "From Darkness to Light"

David LaChapelle is best known for his hyper-sexualized celebrity photographs of everyone from Naomi Campbell to Paris Hilton to David Beckham, and most recently, Lady Gaga. Sure enough, stars turned out for the opening of his latest exhibit, “From Darkness to Light”— Uma Thurman and Daphne Guinness among them.

But this show has none of those flashy, sexy portraits; instead, it involves taking the human body and re-imagining it in different forms. Specifically, in very childlike ways, via stickers, huge looped paper chains, and collages — like something you’d see in a kindergarten art class, but upon closer inspection, you’ll notice the pieces are crafted of nude photos.

The installation is playful, fun, and just a little bit naughty — and it brings a bit of downtown edginess to this otherwise bland corporate office space. Through Sept. 2, Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, lobby, Midtown.



Transcending Form Enchants at Theatre 80

Those who love the fusion of dance, song, and art will be thoroughly enchanted by Transcending Form a new dance work by choreographer John Byrne featuring the artwork of edgy photographer David LaChapelle.

Transcending Form’s eight dancers gracefully navigate the emotional journey of its story of life, afterlife, and the transcending soul to the eclectic, yet superbly appropriate, mix of music from Schubert to Shirley Brown, Michael Jackson, and, yes, even Elvis. Sprinkled throughout the theatrical journey are soulful live vocal performances by Gina Figueroa and the James Solomon Choir. The dance fable, which blends old form with new, is both energized and sensual. Its cast is as diverse as its East Village audience at Theatre 80 lending to its sincerity and appeal.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANJALI RAO, CNNI ANCHOR (voice-over): He's had Courtney Love pose as Mary Magdalene and pictured the late Michael Jackson as a martyr, visions that have helped David LaChapelle's catapult from struggling artist to world famous photographer.

He's also injected his signature style into music videos directing them for artists such as Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera although his flirtatious explorations of pop culture, fashion and religion haven't pleased everyone.

Critics slammed his depiction of Kanye West as a black Jesus and he stirred up controversy with his Lolita-like take on a young Britney Spears. That didn't stop this prodigy of Andy Warhol shine away from a challenge.

In 2002, LaChapelle's talked photographed the video and financed his own documentary about the dance craze cramping in South Central Los Angeles.

This week on TALK ASIA, we catch up with David LaChapelle and his latest exhibition in Hongkong and find out why he ditched the glitch and glamour of fashion photography to return to his autistic roots.

(END VIDEOTAPE)



‘Talking Dance and Art With David LaChapelle and David Byrne'
By Julie Bloom

John Byrne and David LaChapelle used to be a couple. The romance didn’t last, but the two have continued their relationship through art. Mr. Byrne, a choreographer and former dancer for Paul Taylor, worked on “Rize,” Mr. LaChapelle’s 2005 documentary about krumping, as well as “Elton John: The Red Piano.” Now Mr. LaChapelle has produced Mr. Byrne’s first full-length work of dance, “Transcending Form,” with Fred Torres, at Theater 80 every Wednesday through Aug. 24. In addition, Mr. Byrne has created a structured improvisation piece at Lever House, home to an exhibit of Mr. LaChapelle’s work, “From Darkness To Light.” Pedestrians can happen across this performance every Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m. We talked to Mr. Byrne and Mr. LaChapelle about their new works, their collaboration and the melding of dance and art.

“I wanted to do some work specifically for China and inspired by it, kind of like China seen through Western eyes,” says Lachapelle, who has recently won a new generation of admirers in Asia. He considers Lee a particularly potent symbol, given the way he transcended cultural barriers to become an international star.

Mr. LaChapelle’s presence in New York reflects another tie with the pop art pioneer: An attempt to transition from commercial success to greater recognition in the art world. Over the last 25 years, Mr. LaChapelle has become renowned for glossy, sexed-up magazine portraits of stars from Brooke Shields to Lady Gaga. Now, his art shows are selling out and he recently opened an installation at New York’s Lever House, his largest exhibition to date.

The glass-walled lobby of Midtown’s Lever House on Thursday night allowed the post-work crowd a clear view of the sort of human tornado of glitter and color that was the opening of David LaChapelle’s installation, “From Darkness into Light.” 
The exhibit presents the photographer’s work in three different media: stickers, collage, and looped paper chains in the style of a 1950s prom.

Eigentlich war die Hannoveraner Kestnergesellschaft als Treffpunkt für das VOGUE Gespräch zwischen David LaChapelle und Daphne Guinness vereinbart. Doch es sollte alles ganz anders kommen. Die britische Modeikone, Künstlerin und Haute-Couture-Sammlerin war eigens aus London angereist, um die Metamorphose des Enfant terrible der Mode- und Werbefotografie zum Künstler nicht zu verpassen. Bis vor wenigen Jahren drehte sich die Arbeit des amerikanischen Fotografen ausschließlich um Celebrities, skurrile Posen, Sex, sublimen Kitsch und nackte Haut. In Hannover zeigt er jetzt eine dreidimensionale Vanitas-Collage und riesige Blumenstillleben, die die Vergänglichkeit der Warenwelt verkünden. Doch zum verabredeten Zeitpunkt ist der Fotograf einer Wurzelbehandlung wegen beim Zahnarzt. Der aus L. A. angeflogene Star hat alle Interviews abgesagt. Als er dann trotzdem erscheint, ist die Erleichterung groß. Daphne Guinness steht ihm auf atemberaubend hohen Plateaupumps ohne Absatz zur Seite und verschärft die Krise mit der Nachricht, dass ihr Privat jet bereitstehe, um David LaChapelle gleich zum nächsten Termin nach München zu fliegen. Kurzerhandwird beschlossen, das VOGUE-Gespräch über den Wolken zu führen.

He was hired by Andy Warhol. He fired Madonna. He photographed Pamela Anderson and Lady Gaga and also Hillary Clinton, and made a star of the transgender apparition Amanda Lepore.
He earned millions and spent much of that on a self-financed film about an urban dance form created in the rough neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles. When the film, “Rize,” failed to find a large audience, and with David LaChapelle weary after 20 years of 14-hour days, he packed up a career that any commercial photographer might envy, and he disappeared.

TRANSFORMED David LaChapelle has reignited his photography career.

David LaChapelle was the High Priest of celebrity photography for almost two decades. So why has he turned his back on fame and fashion to explore death, disaster and the end of times?

If you show anyone interested in photography a picture of your work, they will immediately say ‘LaChapelle’. Why are you so distinctive? 


Because I didn’t think about it too much. I went intuitively. I blew up colour at the same time grunge took over; all this black and white, people looking depressed, whereas I just exploded with colour. I loved grunge, but I just wanted to be different.

Sometimes I wanted to be funny and put celebrities in strange situations; other times there was something inside my head that I wanted to put in my work.
You only show in galleries now. The Raft is currently exhibiting in Hong Kong, but is there a direct link between this and your earlier work, Deluge?
Yes, The Raft is chapter two in the narrative. It’s an idea from Deluge, the apocalypse of the future, but only in a metaphorical sense, a sort of feeling of the end, that we’re all going to suffer.

HONG KONG — It’s no surprise that Hong Kong’s art fair has taken another bound forward, given its quick growth since it began in 2008. But the rising number of galleries taking part — now at 260 — is not the only reason that 2011 is turning out to be a watershed year.
Internationally, the owners of Art Basel are now majority stakeholders in the Hong Kong event, it was announced at the start of May, a turn that promises to give the fair more prominence.
Locally, ART HK, which opened to the public on Thursday, has spread beyond the confines of the exhibition and convention center. The large number of outside events has created for a first time what feels like a real citywide art week.

Wem das nicht reicht, der kann bei LaChapelles zweiter Serie gleich weitermachen: In „Jesus is my Homeboy“ aus dem Jahr 2003 hat er ebenfalls großformatig biblische Szenen mit Menschen von der Straße an Alltagsorten nachgestellt. Alles ganz normal – bis auf die klassische Darstellung der Jesusfigur mit leuchtender Aura. Leonardo trifft Jesus Christ Superstar. Ist das nun Inspiration? Interpretation? Vielleicht sollte sich Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg die Ausstellung besser nicht ansehen. LaChapelle selbst ist als Inspirationsquelle übrigens weniger freizügig. Zurzeit führt er Klage gegen Popstar Rihanna, der er vorwirft, in einem Musikvideo seine Fotos nachgebaut zu haben.

DAVID LACHAPELLE, known internationally for his acerbic wit and lysergic imagery, talks to MATHEW SCOTT about his career from the Village to Vogue and beyond.

THE CROWD INSIDE the cavernous exhibition hall has been gathering its anticipation for more than half an hour when David LaChapelle appears behind the sound deck, stage right, and begins chatting with the volunteers working at Art Stage Singapore 2011.

HANNOVER.
In the first institutional solo exhibition in Germany of works by the American photographer David LaChapelle (*1964), the kestnergesellschaft presents a series of new, not yet shown photographs. The series Earth Laughs in Flowers, which was created this year, refers to art-historical visual traditions but never loses sight of LaChapelle’s own artistic language.

Mit „Sermon“ aus der Serie „Jesus is my Homeboy“ (oben,2008) katapultiert er Jesus in die Gegenwart, seine Jünger sind tätowierte Muskelkerle, Rapper und Breakdancer. 2010 fotografiert LaChapelle zwölf leicht verwelkte Blumenstilleben nach Art barocker Vanitas-Gemälde: Sinnbilder für Eitelkeit Vergänglichkeit und Tod.

As a DJ played “Xanadu” at the exclusive Ku de ta Club on the 57th floor of Skypark, art collectors from Indonesia, China, Singapore, America, Switzerland and France met to toast Asia’s newest art fair, Art Stage Singapore, being held in the continent’s smallest country (12-16 January). “We as a collectors are doing the job that are governments should be doing—supporting artists, building museums and supporting art fairs,” said Indonesian collector Oei Hong Djien.

He believes that his mission to show beauty in everyone can sometimes be thwarted when celebrities turn out to be unpleasant. Lately, though, he says he has found a mental trick in the pages of a book written by a former prostitute. She was asked how she made herself have sex with physically repulsive people and her technique was to look for the one nice thing about them, even if it was their shoes, he says.



The Photographer of the Illusion.
Reinterpreting his fashion and commercial works as well as the popular culture, the American artist David LaChapelle is being defined as the naughty boy and illusionist of photography after Newton. He is creating identity out of objects and object out of identities.

What is more, LaChapelle is famous for creating portraits of celebrities with the themes; fear, death, existence and belief. Since 1995 he has been awarded several times as the best photography artist of the year and his exhibitions have been held in many countries, from New York to Berlin, from China to France.

Who’s the bigger freak, Michael Jackson or David LaChapelle? The late Jackson was clearly the king, but all he had to work with was his own wacky self. LaChapelle, by contrast, commands an Olympian cast of characters, often in outlandishly erotic costume (or no costume at all), disporting on blazing sets that marry Bollywood and the Bible with a bit of the Parthenon thrown in for good measure.



From Martin Scorsese to Peter Doing, film-makers, photographers and artists explain how Caravaggio's prophetically cinematic paintings inspired them.
David LaChapelle – Photographer and film director

Caravaggio is often called the most modern of the old masters – there's a newness, a contemporary feel to his work that painting prior to him just didn't have. It's like when [fashion designer Alexander] McQueen came on the scene, everything else [in the fashion world] suddenly looked old.

David LaChapelle’s new show called American Jesus at Paul Kasmin Gallery, includes his last photo shoot with his good friend Michael Jackson just before his death. Jackson is represented in different photos as a biblical martyr.

The Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea happens to reside next door to the nightclub Marquee. This meant the opening of photographer David LaChapelle's show "American Jesus" Tuesday coincided with the launch party for the soundtrack to MTV's "Jersey Shore." You wouldn't be faulted for having trouble telling the difference. Was that Snookie or just a drag queen dressed like Snookie? Was that Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino or just another one of Mr. LaChapelle's abtastic friends? Does it matter? Of course not. Just like on the Jersey Shore, in Mr. LaChapelle's universe, pretty much anything goes.

The 47-year-old LaChapelle spoke passionately the other day about growing up gay, Catholic and suicidal in Fairfield, Conn., and finding salvation (and photography) at the North Carolina School for the Arts. Twice he burst into tears recounting the trials of the King of Pop, whose first name he has tattooed on a ring finger. Although they hadn't met, the two had mutual friends. "He knew I was on his side," says LaChapelle, who staged these shots at his farm in Maui.

Photographer David LaChapelle’s newest exhibit, “American Jesus,” depicts the late pop singer Michael Jackson in a series of photos as, well, Jesus.

LaChappelle and Jackson were good friends, and completed a photo shoot shortly before the singer’s death (although it’s likely that a stand-in or two also was involved in putting together these shots).

The photographer David LaChapelle appeared to be something of an anomaly among the suited art folk and trendy hangers-on who packed the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei’s (MOCA, Taipei) Yamaguchi Room when he opened his eponymously titled show of 250 works there last month. Dressed in a hooded navy sweat top and dark jeans, he looked more like a street punk than one of America’s top fashion and art photographers of flashy and flamboyant set images.

Oh, to live the life of David LaChapelle. Ever since he ran away from his strict upbringing in Connecticut at 14 to live it hard and fast in New York with Andy Warhol and the Studio 54 set, it's been a rollercoaster ride of gay sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. He's shot more than 150 covers for Rolling Stone magazine and worked with almost every celebrity misfit and music icon that popular culture has given us. Stories of his epic partying, not to mention his stint as a rent boy and his three mental-institution sojourns, only add to the legend. This new exhibition, a collection of satirical photographic tableaux centered on religion, corruption and exploitation, consolidates the more message-driven and artistic direction his work is taking.

David LaChapelle, the commercial photographer and pop video maker, wants to get away from the kitsch jokiness that made his reputation, and move on to something more socially aware. And, buoyed by sales of his prints at auction and good showings at art fairs in recent years, he wants to expand away from advertising and editorial work into the world called art. This London exhibition is one of the first based on this new ambition.

Over a 20-year career, David LaChapelle has carved a name for himself as an enfant terrible of pop culture photography. The cutting, acerbic wit and layered symbolism in his celebrity portraiture, fashion and advertising images is seen as a bolt of honesty—albeit a glamourised and high-gloss one—in an industry known for its false vision of reality.

Un éternel rendez-vous manqué ... ou pas? Des années durant, David LaChapelle a traqué Michael Jackson. Séances arrangées, reportées, annulées ... La rencontre semblait à jamais interdite, maudite. Et puis voilà: en plein printemps, des rumeurs autour de la mort (ou pas) du chanteur, LaChapelle sort de sa manche de mystérieux portraits d'un Jackson sublimé en icône religieuse. Transcendant la rumeur, le photographe confère ainsi à ce Jackson post-mortem (ou pas) le statut que lui seul pouvait lui donner, celui d'immortel. Finalement, par-delà la vie ou la mort, un rendez-vous réussi avec l'éternité. Ces images intrigantes paraissent à une période charnière de la vie du photographe et pourraient même marquer la transition d'un David à un autre. Car en 2010 LaChapelle est en pleine mue. Il arpente la planète et, prenant racine dans les musées et les galeries de quasiment tous les continents tout en délaissant les publications, alimente les rumeurs autour de son retrait de l'univers du glamour et du papier glacé. Alors, après les années jet -set, les années rejette-set? Installé depuis peu dans le cadre paradisiaque d'une « ferme » hawaiienne, à trois heures de route de toute zone urbaine, LaChapelle semble exploiter cet isolement relatif pour prendre du recul.

This spring, the focus is on the Italian Renaissance. Three quite exceptional exhibitions offer the visitor a textbook analysis of a period that is so often appealed to but still uniformly misunderstood. For anyone who has paused for a moment in front of The Birth of Venus in the Uffizi and listened to the well-intentioned petty ignorances trotted out by guides for un­suspecting and uninterested tourists on 50 (or 500) dollars a day, this comes as relief for which much thanks.

David LaChapelle é o fotógrafo de celebridades mais célebre do mundo. Nos últimos 25 anos, suas imagens extravagantes e de cores saturadas estamparam capas de revistas, campanhas publicitárias milionárias e clipes de música pop premiados. De tal forma que, hoje, cobiçadas por galeristas de olho nos colecionadores que podem pagar US$ 30 mil por uma obra, suas fotos são familiares para qualquer um que leu revistas, assistiu à TV, comprou CDs ou foi ao cinema nos anos 1990.

Photographer David LaChapelle's take on Botticelli's Venus and Mars is enlarged into a mural located in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. It is one of the many public installations that will be on display during the Scotiabank Contact Festival that opens on Saturday.

Making his critically acclaimed, charged urban dance documentary Rize in 2006 was a turning point, as was turning down directing Madonna’s 2005 Hung Up video. “She’s really hard to work for. I didn’t want to be yelled at. She wanted to film a subway scene with people running out. It was just after a subway bombing and I was worried it might be insensitive, but apparently she doesn’t read newspapers. We haven’t spoken since. But I don’t want to direct Hollywood films. I was offered Juno but turned it down.”

Of the artists and photographers working today, they don't come more in your face, more unapologetically trashy, more instantly recognisable than David LaChapelle. The self-anointed "Fellini of photography" is known as a bold recorder of our times, an artist who fuses the perceived glamour of contemporary celebrity with the physicality and complex compositions of the Italian Renaissance artists. Full of sly humour, his photographs both celebrate and subvert the notion of fame. With their staged artificiality and surrealist flourishes, some teeter in the brink of tastelessness while others deliberately turn your stomach.

The latest work by David LaChapelle, the superstar godfather of high-camp portraiture, is a serious artistic take on global politics.
Of all the glittery images in the celebrity pantheon, photographer David LaChapelle's have long been the best examples of over-the-top kinky glam. In the past two decades, he's snapped everyone who is anyone in luxuriantly lurid and deliciously rude set-ups where clothes seem to fall as the colors are turned up.

In 2006, LaChapelle made a dramatic break from the fashion and celebrity scenes, moving to Maui where he renovated a former nudist colony compound, turning it into his private sanctuary. Here he has pursued his fine art work, despite doubts that that arena would accept someone with his background. Now, drawing on a broad base that ranges from art history to street culture, LaChapelle’s new work is turning many a stiff-necked critic’s head, focusing the lens of celebrity and fashion on consumerism and cultural hierarchies.

As influences, I draw on all great artists, from Michelangelo to Michael Jackson. In a recent photograph I depicted Jackson as an angel because he was a modern-day martyr. An innocent artist persecuted in a televised, modern-day witch hunt. The first advertisement that made an impression on me was "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is:' [Alka-Seltzer]. I got into advertising because I was really trying to be independent and it was a step. Showing in galleries didn't pay my bills at the time. I don't feel that working on an advertising campaign compromises my art. On the contrary, it can be so invigorating and energizing for myself and my studio; a good ad job is exciting.

DAVID LACHAPELLE

Few photographers have captured fashion and celebrity with as much airbrushed
excess as David LaChapelle. His over-the-top portraits—spanning Pamela
Anderson, Amanda Lepore and Madonna to Alexander McQueen, Isabella Blow
and Elton John—are icons of 1980s and ‘90s decadence. So when we met up
with the American photographer in Beijing, where he was preparing for an
exhibition of his work at the Today Art Museum (June 2010), we expected
someone a bit flashy and, well, frivolous. Instead, we got deferential and, well,
down-to-earth. Maui, to be exact...

“I saw how the treated Andy at the end of his life. People were awful to him, they hounded him to death. He was huge in Europe and Asia, sure, but at home…” legendary photographer and one-man personality cult David LaChapelle is rarely at a loss for words. He thinks out loud, incapable of or uninterested in keeping secrets: guilelessly an with unnerving generosity picking up the threads of his life story where he left off, as though he were always already your lifelong friends. We met to talk about the newly released Michael Jackson picture, the first of a trilogy, but we were talking about Andy Warhol. “Critics ignoring him, calling his collaboration with Basquiat a disaster. I saw him actually painting in those days, taking up a brush, painting The Last Supper. Around then, Peter Brandt tried to donate a 20-foot Mao to the Modern and they rejected it because the had “no room” can you imagine! Then Andy died and two years later the MoMA has this retrospective; it was the first time they’d ever given over the entire building, every gallery on every floor it seemed like, to a single artist. They had plenty of room then, didn’t they?

攝影界變形金剛 大衛·拉夏培爾
虛擬影像的物境奇用

文：林志鴻

大衛·拉夏培爾 (David LaChapelle) 是美國知名超潮攝影家及MV導演，跨足廣告攝影，當代藝術攝影，紀錄片拍攝，演藝活動現場設計等領域。作品以奇異且華麗的超現實與幽默感而聞名，最近，他更被美國攝影雜誌選為「全球最重要的十個攝影師」之一。自2008年開始，拉夏培爾於世界各大美術館進行巡迴個展和演講，2010年4月2日將在台北當代藝術館推出個展，而2009年12月4日則先在台北國際會議中心，為台灣的觀眾帶來一場大型的暖身演講

'I wanted to get over the collective fear that's instilled in us by the apocalyptic times that we live in," LaChapelle says. ''If the end is coming, if it's inevitable, let's at least go out as enlightened as possible. In the picture of Las Vegas [Sin City], people know that time is out and death is imminent, but they are all helping each other. Their animal instincts aren't coming forward, there's empathy and love."

It could be a metaphor for our times and a symbol of hope, or it might seem like blasphemous pornography. Some may wonder whether it's pop culture or high art, and many will go through David LaChapelle's exhibition, which opened in Dublin last night, picking out the famous faces appearing in scenes that seem to have sprung from Renaissance paintings by way of Vogue.
The centre piece is Deluge, a reworking of a section of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, but in LaChapelle's version it's a modern day cataclysm visited on the Gomorrah that is Las Vegas.

Subtlety isn’t a quality one expects in the work of David LaChapelle, and it’s not one you’ll find in even the title of “The Rape of Africa,” the monumental photographic tableau that is the centerpiece of his show at David Desanctis Gallery.
A compositionally faithful adaptation of Botticelli’s “Venus and Mars,” the work presents a bare-breasted Naomi Campbell in the role of Venus, a white male model who looks to have stumbled out of a Caravaggio painting (or at least a movie about a Caravaggio painting) as Mars, and three young black boys wielding serious artillery in the place of the fawns.
Gold spills out around the reclining Mars (as well as, hilariously, a battered replica of Damien Hirst’s infamous diamond-coated skull), while tractors claw at a barren landscape — presumably a gold mine — visible beyond.
All this in an electrified palette of gold, scarlet, hot pink and turquoise.

David LaChapelle’s bedroom is surrounded by kava, a tranquilizing plant that some say can fight insomnia and inspire vivid dreams. Despite that, the 46-year-old photographer said he couldn’t sleep one recent night, giddy about an upcoming seven-day shoot here. “I always used to pray for a cabin in the woods with vegetarian food and a place to make my art,” said Mr. LaChapelle, his trucker hat twisted sideways as he reached into a gallon-sized jar of honeycomb, harvested from a nearby beehive.

Burnt out after two decades in the world of fashion photography, where he became famous for his surreal portraits of pop stars like Pamela Anderson and Britney Spears, the Warhol disciple called it quits, left his homes in New York and Los Angeles and purchased an 18-acre former nudist colony here on the Wainapanapa coast, a woodsy piece of land overgrown with bramble and teeming with mosquitoes. He spent much of his first three rainy months staring up at the sky in the Italian marble bathtub he had installed outside his cabin, nestled in a jungle of ferns, dragon-fruit plants and night-blooming jasmine.

Interview David LaChapelle

Le photographe white trash roule désormais sa bosse à côté de Dieu et de ses saints, délaissant le temps d’une sulfureuse et décadente after dans la chapelle Sixtine, les idoles gossip shootées au gloss, de l’Amérique. Interview God like !



Britney en teenager lascive en couverture de Rolling Stone, Kanie en Jesus noir, Paris version bondage ; David LaChapelle a signé la plupart des clichés américains les plus persistants de ces 25 dernières années. Artiste narratif, il dépasse aussi l’image figée pour filmer des contes de fées modernes dans des clips musicaux ou dans le documentaire RIZE. À force de traiter les pop stars comme des icônes religieuses et vice-versa, le cocktail à base de culte de la personnalité de l’ancien barman du studio 54 est devenu un classique. Au shaker LaChapelle, le porno devient chic et Hillary Clinton presque cool… Et à travers le filtre du glamour, voir du vulgaire, apparait toujours l’humanité au sujet.

Giunta alla sesta edizione, la biennale moscovita di fotografia “Fashion and Style in photography 2009” conferma l’interesse sempre piu’ vivo da parte del grande pubblico per la fotografia di moda. Uno dei motivi di questo successo lo storico di fotografia Gerry Badger. “ E’ forse il genere he piu’ anticipa e mette in scena l’air du temps”; Appunto la fotografia di moda non ci parla solo di moda, ma anche di costume, di tendenze, di stili che evolvono, riflettendo i gusti e gli umori della società.

Entre LaChapelle et Photo existe une belle histoire d’amitié. Dès l’adolescence, David lisait Photo en le dénichant dans les librairies branchées de New York. Il en garde un souvenir précis et peut parler pendant des heures de tous ceux qu’il a découverts dans nos pages. Il dit que sa culture photographique, il se l’est forgée dans Photo. Puis, il est devenu photographe.

In the main room stands a fantastical pop-up mural showing LaChapelle's own version of apocalypse: consumers laid out nude and clearly in anguish, exotic luxury products and humping golden pigs. Walking us through the exhibition, Lachapelle describes the new work, Decadence: The insufficiency of All Things Attainable (2008), as "anti-commodity art". He nods towards another series, The Crash (2008), four supersized photographs, each printed on mounted cardboard. They display damaged American cars stacked on top of each other, each with a similar title: Enhanced Performance; Intelligent Decadence; Boundless Freedom; Luxurious Power. His latest work, he says, is "inspired by the idea of negative money. I'm taking this as a chance and an opportunity to say something."

El mundo del fotógrafo David LaChapelle es fantástico en extremo. Es un universo de colores vibrantes, donde lo mismo un grupo de niños convive felizmente con el espíritu oscuro de Marilyn Manson, el rapero Kanye West puede tomar el rol de un Jesucristo afroamericano, y la actriz Kirsten Dunst es una muñeca protegidapor un capelo de cristal.

No es casualidad. El artista Andy Warhol le ofreció a LaChapelle su primer trabajo como fotógrafo profesional para la revista Interview luego de conocerse en la famosa discoteca neoyorquina Studio 54, donde el joven trabajaba limpiando mesas.

"My pictures tend to polarize people, as some think it is commercial. But one of my points is that the world of commerce and art have become intertwined at this moment in time—so the subject matter I am dealing with is just the reality of now.
I want to communicate and impact people. In the distracted world we live in, I want to grab people’s attention and hold it, in order to tell them a story in the same way that people’s attention is grabbed by video games, billboards and magazines. But, with my work, there are details and subliminal messages that you would not find in those places. My newer work is much more layered."

Si l’art de David laChapelle atteste avec brio d’une mutation des goûts, il faut remonter au milieu des années 80 pour bien saisir comment la culture populaire et l’art se sont retrouvés. Tout s’est joué avec l’intrusion de la photographie dans le champ artistique. Déjà depuis la fin des années 60, le mouvement conceptuel et le Land Art utilisaient l’image photographique en tant que document. D’autres (tels Ed Ruscha ou Bruce Nauman) concevaient la photographie comme un moyen d’expression autonome.

« Mis fotografias tratan de llegar tal lejos de la realidad como sea posible. Los sueňos deberian ser parte de nuestras vidas diarias. »
Enfrentémoslo. Vivimos en tiempos obsesivos, en una era donde la fascinatión por la fama se compara con la que en otros tiempos por la réligión. Sin embargo, la religiosidad no està perdida. Los nuevos templos estàn en revistas, tabloides, E!, TMZ y profonidades semejantes que nos dan una mirada morbosa a las celebridades.

LaChapelle spent two decades recording pop culture, mirroring it back to itself before flipping the genre on its head and taking a shot from that angle. He was one of the most coveted editorial photographers, working constantly for the likes of Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone. He couldn’t get enough, always with a camera in his hand, always working, working, working, wanting to take a shot of everyone, everyone, anyone who mattered. He wanted those shots to be the definition of the subject’s life, of their celebrity, to capture the glamour in a way that no other photo could, so that in decades, in centuries, someone studying this time period could look at that one photo and know who that person was.

The show is David LaChapelle's. LaChapelle is a photographer and filmmaker and also, an artist I suppose, whose meat and potatoes is American celebrity. He favors props, fantasy, and eye-popping saturation. He likes punchily outlining figures and making them prop forward in the landscape in a way that oddly recalls the Orientalist in Manet. He doesn't fear controversy or taboo (he shot the musician Kanye West in a crown of thorns for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine two years ago, and that image has been recast here, 102 inches tall).

Son œuvre le submerge. Il a tout dit. Avec humour, audace, dérision, il a dit le rêve américain. Avec sarcasme, provocation, glamour, il a dit la société de consommation. Avec fracas, couleur, provocation, il a dit la vacuité du monde. David LaChapelle a été l’anthropologue d’une société qui s’est fabriquée, entre la mode et la convoitise artistique. Il a fait rentrer ses personnages dans ses décors pop art. Chacun participant à son propre autodafé. Les filles ont les fesses qui dépassent d’un short trop court, leurs seins débordent d’un soutien-gorge trop serré, leur rouge à lèvres est toujours trop rouge et leurs ongles rose bonbon, leurs talons sont trop hauts et leur bouche trop sexy pour être vrais.

David är inte svår, han vill bara att det ska vara perfekt, förklarar en av de italienska curatorerna som följt med utställningen till Stockholm från Milano. Efter Stockholrn ska bild erna vidare till Paris och varje gång måste utställningen anpassas efter ett nytt utrymme.
Fotografen själv släntrar runt i lappade jeans och en baseboll-keps med texten "Maui" och "Hang loose". Han är solbränd och trots sina 45 år ser han ut som en kalifornisk skateboardkilie.

Milan accueil l’exposition du photographe américain David LaChapelle, au Palazzo Reale, du 25 sept. 2007 au 6 janvier 2008. Plus de 350 photographies retracent l’ensemble de sa création, dont une nouvelle série que nous présentons ici et en couverture, intitulée « Déluge ». Inspirée par l’œuvre de Michel Ange dans la Chapelle Sixtine, « Déluge » traduit des préoccupations mystiques sur la contemporanéité, métaphoriquement les incidents destructrices d’un matérialisme outrancier sur l’avenir de la société. Organisée en 13 sections, l’exposition aborde les thèmes chers au photographe, « Désastres », « Plastic people », « Consommation »… Photo, qui a fait connaître David LaChapelle en France, vous montre son plus récent travail.

LaChapelle’s most recent photos from 2007 provide a contrast, as they were created not for advertising campaigns, but in the province of fine art, and they have as their theme a great flood.
His central work is an enormous digital photograph (about 6 feet tall and 23 feet long) titled “Deluge” which was inspired by Michelangelo’s painting of the same name depicting the biblical Flood that is displayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Like the Renaissance master’s work, LaChapelle’s depicts several dozen people-all nude, and of a variety of ages and body types-helping each other survive their climate-driven catastrophe.

With the publication of Heaven to Hell – the third book of a trilogy – and his recent move to Hawaii, LaChapelle has now announced a clean break with his past. Refusing to work any longer within the commercial framework of celebrity and fashion photography, he intends to focus on personal work and gallery exhibitions instead, beginning with several current and upcoming shows in Berlin, New York, Buenos Aires and Milan. At 38, David LaChapelle is just at the beginning of a new career.

"La gente realmente no espera nada de una fotografía de moda. Incluso se enfadan si introduces significados, dobles sentidos o contenidos subversivos en las fotos. Probablemente, la gente del mundo de la moda pronto se aburrirá de mi. Yo siempre intento que haya una narrativa en mis fotos. La moda siempre gira entamo a un cierto tipo de imagen, se trata de vender ropa, tiene que ser una imagen hermosa pero no debe provocar, o hacerlo solo de un determinado modo preestablecido. Lo contrario supone meterse en problemas, y eso es lo que yo suelo intentar."

"Ich will ein Kommentator sein, wie Richard Prince. Ich habe die letzten 15 Jahre in Flugzeugen verbracht. Ich hatte ein verrücktes Leben!
Damit bin ich jetzt durch die Bilder, die Sie hier sehen, sind aus freien Stucken entstanden. Sie sehen hier meine Welt der Ideen. Keine Werbung kaum Redaktionelles. Ich wollte immer schon der Bücher veroffentlich haben. Nun ist das dritte draußen, die Trilogie ist komplett Ich könnte weitermachen, noch mehr Geld verdienen , aber das bin nicht ich."

LaChapelle funktioniert nicht nach Zeitplänen, er funktioniert nach Intuition. Er lebt vom Funken des Moments, von den Ideen, die aus der Tiefe seines Kopfs aufsteigen und beim Betrachten des Fotosets platzen wie Blasen, und dann entstehen die phantastischen, schreiend bunten Bildwelten, in denen Models mit riesigen Plastik-Hot-Dogs kämpfen, Nackte sich in bis zum Rand mit Spaghetti gefüllten Badewannen wälzen, Männer an Ketten in Käfigen hocken oder Sekretärinnen in kanariengelben Bikinis ihre Computer zersägen.

"Mon nouveau projet est un retour à mes débuts, quand j’étais un jeune type de New York qui démarrait dans la photographie. Mon matériau était bien plus personnel, une antithèse de ce pour quoi je suis connu. A présent, j’ai un endroit où dormir, de bons amis ; la nature d’Hawaii autour de moi, je n’ai pas besoin de plus. Je veux créer des images qui me rendent heureux, suivre mes envies. Je vie une renaissance. Je n’avais plus le choix artistiquement. J’évolue. Je travaille actuellement sur une série autour du « Déluge » de Michel Ange, et ces photos seront exposées dans les galeries."

You can spot a David LaChapelle photograph at 20 paces: the saturated Pop Art colour, the set-piece, minutelystyled imagery, the warped sense of humour. They look like the product of a deranged, albeit incredibly talented, child let loose with some tins of paint and a load of top-shelf magazines.

The latest example of his extraordinary imagination is a book, Heaven to Hell, a successor to Artist & Prostitutes. ("Prostitutes go to heaven," says LaChapelle. "It's their clients who go to hell").

Seine gesammelten Werke aus zwanzig Jahren Arbeit hat er in den letzten drei Jahren ausgewählt, zusammengestellt und ins Buch "Artists and Prostitutes" eingebracht. Mit seiner Fotosammlung von Künstlern und Prostituierten scheint er einen Strich unter seine bisherige Arbeit ziehen zu wollen. Ob das mit seiner Liebe zusammenhängt? Seit dreieinhalb Jahren lebt LaChapelle mit dem Choreografen John zusammen. " Treu sein ist in der Welt der Kunst eine Herausforderung. Ich habe zu spät im Leben gelernt, dass Sex etwas Heiliges ist " sagt er.

Over the past two decades, the former East Village club-kid-turned-photographer-turned-director has done just that. Legendary for his Technicolor Wizard of Oz-meets-Fellini photographic transmogrifications of pop idols from Pamela Anderson to Tupac Shakur, LaChapelle has naturally segued into big-budget music videos over the past few years. Along the way, he became a multimedia sensation, jetting around the world, garnering accolades for his videos with artists such as Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Moby.

Met deze uitspraak van de Amerikaanse schrijver Truman Capote is fotograaf David LaChapelle het helemaal eens. Hij hees Courtney Love voor een van zijn foto's in een doorschijnend jurkje en smeerde Uma Thurman vol met lipstick. Collegafatograaf Helmut Newton omschreef LaChapelles werk als een humoristisch, absurdistisch en surrealistisch spektakel.

A long-time friend, Anderson has proved a perfect subject for LaChapelle's sexy-twisted portraits that take their inspiration from Truman Capote's dictum that "good taste is the enemy of art”. The interview was moderated by blogger and radio host Kate Sullivan, who e-mailed BB the morning after to say:"I hope those two are feeling no pain but I have to say, in ten years and hundreds of interviews, that was by far the weirdest interview experience I've had....I know you want this to really be a conversation between them, but I didn't quite work out that neatly".

While the Declare Yourself campaign ventures far into the territory of hipdom, using not just celebrity performers in its ads but David LaChapelle, the fashion photographer, to shoot and direct them, its creators said they were not trying to play the cool card.
"Cool was never an adjective on the table," Mr. LaChapelle said. "What's different about this campaign than just Madonna voguing in a flag is that this is really hard hitting: it's going to be scary if you don't use your voice."

The video, directed by the fashion photographer David LaChapelle, was clearly supposed to stir up controversy and add another chapter to the continuing Britney-vs.-Justin Timberlake narrative. (Mr. Dorff may not look exactly like Mr. Timberlake, but the demeanor, and certainly the tumult, are familiar.) While the video plays on the audience’s knowledge of that troubled union, it hardly qualifies as ex-boyfriend bashing.

In the main gallery, Elton John is sharing a joke with a generically modified Pete Burns and a GM-free Sam Taylor Wood. On the dance-floor, two brickshithouse gogo-boys in their Calvin’s are warding off potential dance rivals. In the toilet a boy is crying quietly under the sink. And in the, ahem, backroom a young lady is licking – licking – a wipe clean picture of David Beckham in denim cut-offs… It’s the launch night for David LaChapelle’s i-D sponsored London retrospective and things are going pretty much as expected.

Always elaborate with his set design, for Style, LaChapelle hired an army of extras and special-effects artists to re-create different death scenes. An accident victim passes away in the back of an ambulance and a terminally ill patient finally loses the battle for life. Rising serenely above the chaos of watch death scene is the soul ascending, depicted as a beautiful woman clad in white. “I don’t think of heaven as fluffy white clouds, it’s just a way that we could understand it, showing white light, idealistic beauty and diaphanous dresses. But, ultimately I’m trying to photograph something that is unphotographable, yet is has its own vocabulary,” explains LaChapelle.

The brainchild of LaChapelle, Elton's new video is a kind of flipside to last year's "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore", in which Justin Timberlake, as the young Elton, circa 1976, moves in slow motion through celebrity strewn backstage corridors, his lips in sync with Elton's voice. "It's what a superstar goes through to get from the dressing-room to the stage," explains LaChapelle.

A LaChapelle photo shoot is a production, and so, apparently, is a LaChapelle life.
His entire crew, including Kristen Vallow, his set designer, his studio manager, agent, favorite art directors, wranglers, muses -- their friends and relatives -- have all assembled at one of the chateau's most remote and desirable Modernist cottages to hang out, talk, smoke, talk some more, get made up, run around, carry things, talk and fuss over the makeup artist Sharon Gault's baby, nicknamed Peanut. Amanda Lepore, whose flawless transformation from male to female is almost incidental to her voluptuous lips, is here from New York, along with Princess Zoraya (Armen Ra), who is learning to play the theremin. The actor Tobias Maendel is lounging around in blue jeans and aviator glasses, looking like a mid-70's hustler. Lili Haydn, a violinist-singer who appeared onstage with the P-Funk All-Stars at Woodstock II, is tuning up. Amy Dinkins, an opera singer, is running scales. The landscape designers Andrew Cao and Stephen Jerrom are pouring ground and tumbled shards of colored glass to make glittering walkways in the yard. Eric and his assistants are putting the final touches on the fake-real food. And Drea De Matteo, an actor from "The Sopranos," is holding court on one of the lawn settees, looking like a cross between a biker chick and a young Farrah Fawcett.

"Being in a photograph is a performance. For an actor or a rock star, it's just an extension of entertaining. The really smart entertainers know how important it is to get still images out there. Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, even the reclusive Marlon Brando knew the importance of leaving the world with stills of themselves. Some young actors today don't get it; they think it's not cool to be photographed. But it is. The photograph is tangible, a frozen moment of time."

A significant part of LaChapelle’s last decade has been spent living out of a suitcase in various glam hotels around the world, and it is this lifestyle that gave rise to the title of his new collection. “I’ve gotten so used to living in them that I’ve made my apartment look like one so that I won’t feel away from home when I actually am home,” he writes in the afterword to the new volume. “But more than that,” he tells me, “I view this book as a collection of people that make up the time we live in. It’s really about America today.”

"I always want my subjects to be beautiful, bigger-than-Iife icons. Movie stars, you know? But we're in a different world now, and that world's not so pretty. So with anybody I shoot I think about what they've done. And look at the life Pam Anderson leads: It's crazy and scandalous and, just like you can't take your eyes off a car wreck, you can't take your eyes off her. So, in the picture, maybe she got hit by a car and her wig fell off, but, hey, her body's slammin' and her face looks gorgeous. It's a beautiful car wreck".

David selbst kann allerdings wenig damit anfangen, wenn seine Arbeiten in Theorien beschrieben werden. Er sei wie "Dali durch Warhol gefiltert mit viel Diane-Arbus-Zutaten", schrieb beispielsweise die "New York Tunes": andere sehen in seinen Aufnahmen die Fortsetzung von Magrltte-Bildern. und manchmal fällt auch der Name, der David wirklich gefällt: Fellini. Ja, dann lächelt er, dann freut er sich, er mag die Fantasiebauten des italienischen Remgisseurs, mag dessen Ironie und sanfte Ignoranz der trüben Wirklichkeit. Fragt man LaChapelle, in welchem seiner Bilder er die meisten seiner Gedanken versammelt findet, zeigt er auf das Foto " Fleiscb",ein kargesArrangement aus einem Mädchenkörper, der mit einer kompletten Rinderhälfte auf einem Hotelbett liegt.

During the early 1980's, when David LaChapelle was working as a busboy at Studio 54, he used to sneak into openings at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in SoHo to see his idols: Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat. On June 4, Mr. LaChapelle, who is one of the most successful photographers in the world, had his dream come true when the first show of his work opened at the Shafrazi Gallery on Wooster Street.
[...]"How it happened is pretty amazing," said Mr. LaChapelle. "We were shooting Naomi Campbell for Playboy and she called up Tony and said, if you want to see me naked come over now, and he came over and we just started talking about pictures and the reasons I do them and stuff".

Looking beyond these obvious characteristics, LaChapelle is able to demonstrate an uncanny narrative ability with the economy of a devastating quip. "Nuns and Maids" exemplifies the leveling field exerted by an earthquake, a natural catastrophe that inevitably reduces even the most sophisticated culture to a rubble and in effect erases all distinctions between upper and lower classes, whereby everyone is truly homeless, glamour or no glamour.

As Amanda’s mentor, photographer David LaChapelle, explains it, “She has no interest in being a girl. She wants to be a drawing of a girl, a cartoon like Jessica Rabbit. When I told her that silicone is dangerous, she said, ‘I don’t care, as long as I look beautiful in the coffin.’ There’s something kind of profound in that, that she’s creating this moment of beauty for herself and is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.”

«Mes meilleures idées, je les tire de ce que je vis, de mon imaginaire, De mes rêves, de mes fantasmes ... Pas des autres !»
Les magazines s'arrachent les couleurs, l'humour, la créativité, la démesure, le sens du portrait et de la composition, la sensibilité ... en bref le talent de ce jeune photographe new-yorkais. Son livre est l'un des grands événements photo de la rentrée.

LaChapelle’s Fellini-like images have appeared in such magazines as Rolling Stone, Interview, Vanity Fair, and French Vogue as well as in his 1996 debut book, LaChapelle Land. With Hotel LaChapelle, the photographer checks the eyes of the beholder into a room with an unearthly view

Because of the conceptual, storytelling nature of his work, you might expect that the next step in LaChapelle’s career would be for him to direct a film. In fact, the photographer has been working on developing a film for several years. To whet his appetite, LaChapelle has directed a video for the rock group the Dandy Warhols, a short film for Giorgio Armani, and a Citibank commercial featuring Elton John, each one an intensely colorful, bizarrely off-kilter visual feast. “But photography is my first love,” he says.

Elle est blanche, elle est noire, elle est sainte, elle est démon. Depuis longtemps, elle est profondément intéressée par la kabbale juive et l'hindouisme. Je me suis servi de ces deux symbolismes. Le dragon sauvage et incontrôlable et le cygne protecteur, paradisiaque et serein.

Is there a difference between his editorial work (for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Details, among others) and his equally varied advertising oeuvre? “Editorial is a laboratory. That’s where I do all my experimenting,” LaChapelle explains. “With advertising you’re dealing with big corporations, and they can’t afford to let someone experiment on their tab.” But he readily admits that the end result usually turns out entirely different from the sketch originally presented to him. No matter; there seem to be very few complaints. When Weiss Whitten Stagliano came to him with the idea for the “Boot Licker” shot in the Bass Ale campaign, they suggested black leather. But he felt the whole picture would turn out ugly. “I thought it would look beautiful to see the orange balanced against blue. The blue vinyl is much prettier than black leather and not so cliché.”

LaChapelle's elaborate productions are often described as "little movie sets", so it's no surprise the photographer has, in the past few years, made the transition from print to directing commercials and music videos. He made his live-action debut in 1995 with a promo for MTV's Raw, a hilarious send up of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. "Commercial work is challenging" says LaChapelle, who directs through Venus/HSI in New York. "I'm good at telling a story. Each photograph tells a story. It's chance for my pictures to walk and talk".

In 1992, frustrated after an album-cover shoot with Keith Richards, David LaChapelle decided to transform celebrity portraiture into a personal crusade. In the process, he turned his career around and changed the look of commercial photography.

"I like to see outrageousness and sexiness and things that are out of control," he says. His high-concept pop-cultural references (the Beastie Boys as sloppy workers at a fast-food Joint) and lusciously candy-colored sexuality (Drew Barrymore as a nipple-flash¬ing waitress) struck a chord with a modern audience looking for visual pizazz. Today they're instantly recognizable.

When given a portrait assignment (he regularly shoots for Detour, Interview and Vanity Fair), LaChapelle considers the subject carefully: “I never want to take the same picture twice. With stars I think how I can photograph them in a way that somehow celebrates who they are.” Beauty is essential, and LaChapelle freely admits he uses computer technology to enhance his subjects, minimizing their faults and transporting them to otherworldly settings: “I want everyone I photograph to look like movie and rock stars. I’m not into exposing their flaws of wrinkles or pimples. I am totally into making them look amazing. I was photographing Stevie Nicks a few years back when she was heavy. I sat her down and said, ‘It doesn’t matter because I’m going to make you look great.’"

"I’m deeply interested in the way people are altering their faces and bodies, he explains. “After a certain amount of plastic surgery, people begin to look neither young nor old, and this is the first time in history that people have had this exploring the possibilities of where plastic surgery might be going. In a strange way, I find them beautiful. Sometimes, for me, beauty is simply something I haven’t seen before.”

LaChapelle’s first work appeared in magazines-and if you scan the pages of his book, LaChapelle Land, you’ll be reminded of the images that helped make Details, The Face and French Vogue worth buying over the years. But the 34-year-old LaChapelle has recently expanded his vision through commercials, music videos and Salvation Armani, a short film for Giorgio Armani, starring Jennifer Tilly.

LaChapelle’s reached a place where he can afford to rock the boat of the entertainment industry lemmings. Yet, at the same time, David genuinely remembers the long, hard road from his first quasi-glamour gig as a Studio 54 busboy to a do-no-wrong publishing darling. In 1978, a fifteen-year-old LaChapelle had pulled chocks à la Keith Haring, packed his shit, and left his family digs in a North Carolina apartment complex to make a break for the Big City. By his own admission, he was a pot-smoking disaster, day-dreaming about supporting himself as a painter or illustrator

"Recently, I saw an anchorwoman on TV with bleached-out fuzz, obvious cosmetic surgery and capped teeth make a condescending remark about fashion being trite and superficial after a segment about the Paris shows. Artistry, craftsmanship, beauty and entertainment are important in all cultures, any National Geographic will attest to that. Fashion encompasses all of these things. Is it more profound to be an investment banker? How twisted that we consider an accumulation of money somehow meaningful. I find people whose existence is monetarily centered, whose goals and focus are on getting rich, loathsome and banal. I’d rather spend my time with people who are obsessed with creation and beauty-they laugh more."

Vision : How do you see what you do ?
I try to think of the most twisted thing and reclaim it and make it beautiful. I’m inspired by music, by friends, but never by other photographers.

El objetivo de David LaChapelle es retratar a cada uno de sus modelos, pero no tratando de captar una sutil mirada o un gesto inconfundible, sino amueblando un mundo imaginario de objetos y fetiches que desvelen certeramente su personalidad. Son retratos amueblados. "Trato de hacer fotografías que no haya visto nunca antes" asegura LaChapelle. Y no es fácil encontrar en el panorama fotográfico actual nada que se parezca a sus imágenes alocadamente barrocas.

The most famous photo in LaChapelle Land is also the most homo-friendly: the much-talked-about Diesel jeans ad depicting a passionate V-J Day kiss between two hot and hunky sailors, portrayed by former gay power couple Bob and Rod Jackson-Paris. "That's one of the things I'm most proud of," says LaChapelle, talking about the shot, which he says he intended as a kind of fashionably correct commentary on the ongoing controversy about gays in the military. "Diesel ran that ad in 67 countries around the world," he marvels, "and I've met so many gay people-from k.d. lang to a bartender at a gay bar in Orlando-who told me that they ripped that photo out of a magazine and put it on the wall. I would have loved to have seen an image like that when I was 15-it would have meant a lot to me."

In the glitzily decorated room -festooned with streamers, balloons, wedding cakes, and ice sculptures- the beautiful people ran rampant in masks and mascaras LaChapelle, done up like a space-age Donny Osmond, radiated the sweet smell of success. The music was 70s, the entertainment -break dancing! - was '80s, but the mood was up-to-the-minute'90s, and you must believe me on that.

Creative Exchange Agency congratulates David LaChapelle on winning the 1996 VH1 Fashion Awards for Best Photographer of the Year.

Playful and slightly perverse, LaChapelle pushes his celebrity subjects into caricaturing their carefully tended images. The results range from stunning to grotesque. Tori Spelling-made up to look like a cross between a prostitute and a prom queen-was so distraught during her shoot that she ran to the bathroom in tears. But somehow, LaChapelle-a grown man who embraces his inner club kid-gets his subjects to play along. “I don’t do nudity, usually,” says actress Jennifer Tilly, “but you feel trust with David. Before I knew it, I had nothing on and was holding these tiny fans on my private parts.”

David Duchovny, Drew Barrymore, Tupac, Sandra Bullock and Coolio are just a few of the celebs to have been given the magician's makeover - for true surreal appeal, get your paws round a copy and brighten up that bookshelf. The same effect as drinking half a bottle of tequila, but without the hangover.

"As a kid I was dead-set on becoming a painter or an illustrator. Then I went to an art high school in North Carolina and that's when I first started taking pictures. My first roll of film was of my friends completely naked in my dorm room! And I knew that was it, I was completely sold and I can't remember ever finishing a drawing after that."

Anyone who follows contemporary photography cannot not know who David LaChapelle is. His career as a photographer began while attending an arts high school in North Carolina. Switching over from drawing to photography as his medium proved “a faster way to say what I wanted to say.” His first roll of film captured nude portraits of his classmates, young dancers and sculptors. It seems appropriate that this genesis has evolved into the current work; a host of angels, saints, mythical and allegorical figures.

Though he's one of the hottest photographers working in fashion and advertising today, you couldn't call him an overnight sensation. He's been working since the mid-1980's (in 1987, American Photographer chose the then unknown LaChapelle as one of its promising "New Faces"), but in the past year his career has gone ballistic. He's under contract with Details magazine. His superlative campaign for Diesel jeans has set the ad industry on its ear. And he's negotiating with publishers to do a book within the next year.

Art directors and editors who have worked with Mr. LaChapelle share one comment about the work they received at the end of epic productions: it is always something they haven't seen before.

"He's very much a creator rather than just an observer," said Donald Schneider, the art director of French Vogue. "It's driven by the desire to look into the next millennium: building sets and manipulating the photos on the computer. Everybody is fed up with retro, and the good young photographers want to explore the future and come up with new things. He is the one farthest ahead already."

One critic notes that LaChapelle blurs distinctions between photography and painting. The bounties of beauty, as codified by Renaissance artists, the Pre-Raphaelites and popular 19th-century illustrators, is here earnestly naked. Yet the nudity also signifies innocence cleansing, spirit. In fact, the body becomes a symbol for transfiguration between earth and spirit. Like the shakers or other late 19th century adherents of spiritual revival the figures here are never idle, though neither are they demonstrative. Within a naïve search for truth, they are actively engaged in discovery. Stripped of austerity they gracefully become a basic element. The subject becomes the alchemy of transformation.