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So why did LaChapelle go from over-the-top hyper-sexed photos and an appetite for an existence without limits or taboos to life on a Hawaiian island away from the tabloids, eating and gardening bio and meditating in the morning? He has made the switch from fashion photography back to fine art, having gone from being in love with everything he was working LIFESTYLE 9/19/2014 on to questioning everything he was doing. He had nothing left to say in the realm of fashion and his themes became increasingly difficult for mag- Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle azines to digest. A maniacal perfectionist, he was also a complete work- Contributor aholic and worked 14-hour days for months on end without taking a day of vacation, finally losing himself as he didn’t know how to say “no”. The David LaChapelle: From Fashion long hours in the studio, his obsessively detail-oriented personality and binge drinking took a toll on him. He knew he couldn’t continue working Photography to Fine Art at that pace. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was convinced that he had AIDS and, when a self-financed critically-acclaimed documentary, Despite being criticized for being too commercial, offensively Rize, about an urban dance form originating from the rough neighborhoods provocative and grotesque, David LaChapelle is an essential of South Central Los Angeles failed to find a large audience, he called it figure in photography, having been wildly successful working quits, packed his bags, left his homes in New York and Los Angeles and with the biggest names in the entertainment and fashion worlds, disappeared on a self-imposed exile, trading in his high-flying photograph- contributing his exuberant ideas, boundless creativity and ic career for a former nudist colony-turned-working organic farm in the distinctive style. Constructing decadent sets, he staged his models middle of the jungle in a remote area of Hawaii. The thought of not having against baroque and delirious backdrops to produce visually-com- to work for pop stars or magazines anymore was liberating. That was in pelling images, each unique in their narrative and evocative 2006. content. He has the ability of making his subjects push their characters yet brings across his point with stereotypes Today living and working in Maui, the 51-year-old fashion retiree has associated with their image. He has depicted a turbaned Elizabeth reignited his photography career by creating images that one would never Taylor looking like a $5 fortune-teller, Courtney Love as Virgin equate with his more commercial work, contemplating the complicated Mary, Lady Gaga wearing only screaming headlines, a Michael and often destructive society in which we live. He has come full circle: his Jackson impersonator as a misunderstood martyr, Angelina Jolie wish to revisit a period in the early ’80s before life was tainted by tragedy in various states of undress and Pamela Anderson baring all in a motivated him to return to the art he made when he first moved to New room plastered with her Playboy spreads. As one of the world’s York, having started his career showing work in galleries and loft spaces. most in-demand photographers and directors for advertising and Rather than documenting events head-on, he injects beauty into them in a publishing, LaChapelle’s imprint is everywhere, having set new signature style that doesn’t shy away from intense colors and well-known standards for glamorous, celebrity portraiture. He has immor- faces. He uses many of the tricks of the trade he had learned working talized Madonna, Elton John, Naomi Campbell, Lil’ Kim, Uma commercially over the years to attract, rather than repel, people. However, Thurman, David Beckham, Paris Hilton, Hillary Clinton, Mu- having made such a big name in the commercial arena over the last two hammad Ali, Britney Spears and Alicia Keys, to name just a few. decades, he didn’t think that the art world would accept him, as he’s still At the pinnacle of his success, a LaChapelle photo was a badge a polarizing figure for many and believes his work doesn’t look like art, of being hip and adventurous, and all the hot young stars – from but belongs in a magazine. Nonetheless, art gallery exhibitions came along music, film or fashion – wanted him to take their photo, direct and they offered him an opportunity to produce new work. their video or shoot their movie. LaChapelle’s style is hyper-saturated, theatrical, surrealistic and a combi- nation of art history and contemporary pop culture. Inspired by Michel- angelo’s The Deluge fresco in the Sistine Chapel, he created a series of flood-inspired shots. He followed this up withThe Raft, where his team constructed a raft from wooden planks and rusty barrels, for a photo influenced by Théodore Géricault’s 1819 painting, The Raft of the Medusa, displayed in the Louvre. He explains how he decides on the subject matter of his artworks, “Inspiration comes from within. Energy is all around and in us. We can tap into it, this river of endless possibility if we are open to being a conduit. The idea comes as if in a dream or a daydream into our consciousness. The meaning is then revealed to the intellect. I am more compelled to make images than inspired. It is a calling. The idea or vision dictates whether it is male or female. The vision is already complete. It is my task to then construct this and manifest it on the material plane.” Would-Be Martyr and 72 Virgins, 2008, chromogenic print (Photo © David LaChapelle) Eminem: About to Blow, 1999, chromogenic print (Photo © David LaChapelle) Having horrified many with his Fellinian visions of life, love, sex her overly-exaggerated features, thereby confronting the hypocrisy and and even the Gospels, LaChapelle returned with a Last Supper double standard regarding sexuality. In the famous photograph where she collection in wax in 2009. Obsessed by the question of notoriety, sniffs diamonds, she represents a model of radical addiction to glamor. after vandals had attacked the Dublin Wax Museum, he travelled How does LaChapelle photograph someone who was born in a male body there to make a record of the massacred lookalikes, which led him yet rejected it, fulfilled her dream and became a woman, which ultimately to investigate wax museums in California and Nevada. His photo- represents an extraordinary truth and sincerity? He replies, “Transsexuals graphic fresco reinterpreting Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper are special beings. To me, they are like goddesses: brave, beautiful, myste- precisely places the bodiless heads and expressive, yet completely rious. They possess both energies.” detached, hands of the models of Christ and his apostles in card- board boxes, compositionally representing the original masterpiece in an accurate yet startling contemporary way. Ten years after his iconic Jesus is My Homeboy Last Supper with the apostles repre- sented by young tattooed men wearing baseball caps and drinking beers, melding street art and religion, he continues to contemplate the resurgence of the spiritual in our material-dominated society. While the series sparked scandal from some who argued that his representations were blasphemous or disrespectful, the artist asserted that any negative reaction simply reflected the biases of a contemporary audience unable to imagine a Christ of today. Offering a strange and profound spectacle, the Still Life series tackles the dark side of pop culture and the political world, from Leonardo DiCaprio to John F. Kennedy and Lady Diana – here reduced to eerie portraits of forgotten wax mannequins, damaged or simply condemned to museum storage closets – a reflection on the fleeting nature of fame, celebrity and power. These disfig- ured human “still lifes” also relate to our fascination with the downfall of our once lionized heroes. The hyper-realistic style of the images confers a feeling of authenticity on these damaged imitations, made all the more disturbing because LaChapelle had photographed many of these people in real life. Still Life expands on the idea of Earth Laughs in Flowers, still life works exploring contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and the fragility of humanity. LaChapelle has photographed hundreds of celebrities, always Amanda as Andy Warhol’s Liz Taylor in Red, 2003, chromogenic print (Photo © David LaChapelle) depicted provocatively, usually in full or partial nudity. His use of the erotic facet liberates the representation of the female body LaChapelle always knew he wanted to be an artist. He got his first glimpse from pornographic connotations, from the association of nakedness of photography at an early age from his mother, who was an amateur with sin and from the correlation of lust with sexual gratification, photographer and would pose him in the most unlikely of situations. abuse and humiliation. He hopes that his female nudes convey the Growing up in suburban Connecticut, he spent lunchtimes in the art room message that “we are more than our bodies; there is more to us to hide from bullies, then dropped out of high school and ran away to New than the physical”. He describes the greatest challenge he faces York City at the age of 15. His first job was a busboy at the legendary when depicting the female figure: “Staying true to the intention, club, Studio 54, where he met Warhol, who was his mentor until the day making a pure translation of a given vision, which is like being he passed away. His father came and got him and, after a year in art school handed something precious to be carried or delivered to another in North Carolina where he fell in love with photography, he returned to destination.” New York at 18 (when new art stars such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were emerging), became an East Village fixture and began a LaChapelle’s approach to the body, whether female or male, is the commercial photography career with a job at Warhol’s Interview maga- same: “The essential order of life is a balance of the masculine and zine, first shooting The Beastie Boys in Times Square.

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