THE RIZE OF
DAVID LACHAPELLE
WORDS PHIL TARLEY
IMAGES © DAVID LACHAPELLE, COURTESY FRED TORRES COLLABORATIONS
KANYE WEST, RIOT • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
PROFILE
PHOSPHORESCENT, OVER-SATURATED COLOR POURS OUT
OF HIS MIND’S EYE AND FILTERS THROUGH A MAD-HYSTERICAL KIND OF PHOTOSHOP-ED SYNESTHESIA. SEX
AND SENSUALITY, POLITICAL COMMENTARY, AND POP
ICONOGRAPHY FUSE TOGETHER IN DAVID LACHAPELLE’S
WONDROUS, SOMETIMES NUMINOUS WORLD OF EPIC,
LARGE-FORMAT PHOTOGRAPHY. EXHILARATING AND
EXHAUSTING (EXCESS IS NEVER ENOUGH), MANY OF
LACHAPELLE’S BEST PHOTOGRAPHS CAN BE BOTH ALLURING AND ABHORRENT — AT THE SAME TIME.
DLC zaps the pop zeitgeist. His Hollywood divas like Paris Hilton and
Angelina Jolie vie with Amanda Lepore and Lil’ Kim, in cutting-edge reinterpretations of
the female form – and I do mean cutting edge. Little Kim’s lips and hips, engorged with
silicone and implants and Lepore’s countless sex-change surgeries make us redefine what
a beautiful woman can or can not be.
His eerie underwater series, and his personal favorite, Deluge - soon to be
eclipsed by an even bigger waterwork, The Raft – explore hydrodynamics in search of a
new visual domain.
LaChapelle is everywhere. His travel schedule is dizzying. “I will be opening a
show in Turkey that’s moving from the Museum of Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, then
I’m going to Asia for three weeks - we have some great exhibitions planned for China, so
it’s a little hectic.”
When I met David in the winter of 2009 at the shows that surround Art Basel
Miami Beach 2009, he was bursting out from a howling cacophony of art anarchy.
LaChapelle was all over Miami like an art angel, bedeviling the event with magnificent
works that appeared at the most important venues. He had a one-man exhibition at
Wolfgang Roth & Partners and had three Michael Jackson pieces in the main show at
ABMB. He also created a surreal, intensely compelling image, Berlin Stories, for German
automaker Maybach, who had commissioned Lachapelle to celebrate and commemorate their historic and contemporary line of luxury cars for their Daimler Art Collection.
The lucrative alliance between artists and purveyors of high-end luxury goods
has morphed into a major trend. Murakami went to Louis Vuitton, David Lynch went
to Cartier, and LaChapelle went to Maybach. DLC had a rough assignment: how to promote his sponsor’s wares and push his photography into new artistic territory. He did
RIZE • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
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PROFILE
both, and he did it with his leitmotif over-the-top hyper-sensuality in both the mural and
in the opulent party David staged at The Raleigh, one of South Beach’s most glamorous
hotels. The artist meticulously styled the elements of the party exactly like the 1932 New
Year’s Eve party depicted in Berlin Stories, replete with a carnival of period dancer-swimmers (synchronized Busby Berkeley-like performers), submerged in The Raleigh’s Art
Deco pool. Serenaded by a jazzy ‘30s swing band, the event was a kind of performance
art extension of the party depicted in the mural it celebrated – all done in art overdrive.
After Miami, David was the Guest Host at the photo l.a. vernisage 2009. This
year, LaChapelle is again participating in the January event as a member of the
Honorary Host Committee. Fair Director and gallery owner Stephen Cohen talked to
me about David’s work.
“Los Angeles has never been shy about itself. Glitz and glamour has always
been its bread and butter. Stepping it up quite a few notches from George Hurrell is
David LaChapelle.”
“Last year along with LACMA, we thought David was a great choice for photo
l.a.’s guest of honour, because of his long-time commitment to photography. David’s
style has made an impact on how celebrity is seen by the public. It’s become part of the
public conversation. He has so many iconic images that stay with people. They might
not know his name, but they know his image and the celebrity and that’s what it’s all
about. He has taken photography to a new level. If L.A. had a photographic style, it
would be his.”
When Heaven to Hell, David’s latest book from Taschen, barreled onto my desk
to review, I got to take a fresh look at this man’s torrid body of work. Brimming with
insouciant, sassy sexuality, LaChapelle’s world is a lexicon of luminous pop-culture, an
uber-world of brilliant, fine art photography. Studying the eye-popping double truck
images of Heaven To Hell renders David’s unique perspective as that of a visionary- Pop;
yes - but flush with ironic pleasures and bizarre cultural parodies.
Seeding this artist’s cosmology are tributes to the photographic worlds of
Diane Arbus, Pierre et Gilles, Terry Richardson, Kenneth Anger, and James Bidgood –
with constant homage to Da Vinci and Warhol. Cascading from his consciousness is a
non-stop parade of celebrities, often referencing other celebrities. Amanda Lepore does
Elizabeth Taylor; Pamela Anderson does Bardot; Decaprio does Brando. LaChapelle also
references iconic movie culture, with a series on Taxi Driver and another on Scarface. And
then, in Jesus is my Homeboy, there are images deifying the most deified celebrity on the
planet; one of DLC’s most notorious and strangely compelling works.
When I decided to look at LaChapelle’s feature film Rize, a dance documentary
shot entirely in South Central Los Angeles, it was like unlocking the gates to heaven.
Rize (2005), a Sundance favorite and DLC’s only feature film, functions as a
kind of codex of creation, a stylistic key that can be used to fathom this artist’s work,
enabling us to parse his preoccupation with Los Angeles and its culture. The film opens
with clips of actual footage of the streets on fire during one of Los Angeles’ many riots.
L.A. burning, police over-reactions, and dystopian cityscapes can also be seen in many of
LaChapelle’s still images.
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AWAKENED ABRAM • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
LAST SUPPER • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
GUILTY THINGS • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
LEONARDO DICAPRIO, NOSTALGIC STYLING • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
AMANDA, AS ANDY WARHOLS LIZ RED • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
PROFILE
Out from a bullet-ridden culture of gangstas, drive-byes, and homeboys, comes
Krumping, a desperado style of ghetto dance, performed by lithe, heavily muscled black
bodies dripping with sweat and fever. In Rize, we see the computer used to enhance the
color saturation of the image, another LaChapelle hallmark. The celebration of muscled, black bodies that dance across the frame come also to inhabit other DLC works,
like Guilty Pleasures. The homeboy culture laid down in Rize reappears in the Jesus Is My
Homeboy series. Los Angeles’ gang-thug culture is clearly a totemic marker, a touchstone
the artist returns to again and again.
LaChapelle’s Hollywood studio is a Byzantine warren of offices, stages, cycloramas, computer retouch and composite stations, and costume and prop rooms. Hard at
work are a dozen assistants and devotees – it’s a light day. As George, the studio manager, tours me through the facility, we ascend to the second floor. Lining the staircase are
shelves of archives detailing the craftsmen and resources used to make each image,
which LaChapelle can source for subsequent jobs.
George affably escorts me up into David’s dark, wood-paneled office and private screening room. Caulked by hand on a mirror over a Baroque mantle is, “Love as
much as you can. Laugh as a child. Ride your bike.” A large black and white photo of Andy
Warhol, David’s muse and mentor, casually leans against the mirror. And I get it. I am in
The Factory; not Andy’s but David’s version of it.
Trying to interview David LaChapelle is like asking questions of a force of
nature. David’s words come tumbling out gushing faster than I can keep up. I let him
take the lead. He organizes our meeting visually, flipping through pages of photographs
in his countless books and stopping on an image to tell its story. How Faye Dunaway generates tears (she declines make-up, she acts); how shooting Milton Berl, a bit crotchety
in old age, necessitates David assigning a scantily clad model to flirt with him - so Berl
can be silly and David can get great poses. “Always try to make things as engaging as you
can for the person you are photographing. Keep it fun.” We come to a photo of Tom
Jones, and David remembers how he saved the film from a lab mistake by using one of
the first computers made for retouching, with a hard drive as big as a boiler room.
David is the consummate circus ringmaster. He is in total control. Yet with
scores of elements marshaled to his directorial will, he retains the remarkable ability to let
go like a child at play and be completely “in the moment,” free to improvise and create.
David LaChapelle is on fire. His obsessive iconography is matched only by his
burning desire to make art, to make film, to make parties, to see and be seen everywhere
all the time. Planet LaChapelle is a visceral and procreative non-stop ejaculation of art
spewing out all over the universe.
More information about David LaChapelle can be found at:
www.lachapellestudio.com
MURDERER II • © DAVID LACHAPELLE
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