David LaChapelle is counted amongst today’s most dazzling and striking artist personalities. In capturing the glittering world of high society, the American photographer and film director creates not only a portrait of a person, but the pointed characterisation of a whole society – with all its peculiarities and mannerisms.
(...) Continue readingDavid LaChapelle – An idiosyncratic photographer for the rich and beautiful
David LaChapelle was born in Connecticut on 11 March 1963. If the anecdote from his early childhood is to be believed, he photographed his mother posing in a bikini and holding a glass of martini at the delicate age of six – an anecdote that would fit the photographer who studied at the Art Student’s League and the School of Visual Arts and who took photos for Andy Warhol’s magazine ‘Interview Magazine’ in the 1980s. It was Warhol also who enabled LaChapelle’s first solo exhibition, having previously featured as one among many in the galleries of New York. In the years that followed, David LaChapelle worked as a photographer for almost all the big magazines including the Italian and French editions of Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and more, and exerted a similar pull on celebrities. Numerous big names swarmed in front of the lens: alongside stars of music and sport such as Jennifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie and David Beckham, LaChapelle also attracted fans of his work in the world of politics such as Hilary Clinton. They all wanted to sit for David LaChapelle, who, it is said, even hung up on the pop superstar Madonna during a conversation because he did not like her attitude.
Economic success brings artistic freedom
For David LaChapelle, the status as one of the most coveted photographers of high society was not the goal, but merely one stage. The immense fame brought great financial gain and enabled the artist to follow his own path. Indeed, he had already broken with conventions with his photo series for the big magazines, and staged his prominent models with innovative power and furore. His unerring provocations corresponded to the beauty mania of the consumer society at the turn of the millennium and strained the tolerance of publishers, editors and readers. In fact, it was important to LaChapelle to depict not only the glittering surface in his pictures, but to sound out the abyss beneath. When he withdrew from the world of the glossy magazines in 2006 and swerved to other motifs, his particular style that made his pictures so distinctive was still recognisable in his nature photographs.
David LaChapelle celebrates the beauty of the world
The artist has long left his wild phase of provocation behind, but LaChapelle does not regret anything and does not wish to distance himself from it. His assault to the top, he notes in retrospect, made his life as an autonomous artist possible, whilst beauty and lustre have lost none of heir fascination. He owns a large area of land in Maui where he has found the longed-for peace for reflection and renewal. Here, meanwhile, he creates modern versions of the still lifes of Old Masters. For all his paintings, he draws on the advice he received from Andy Warhol at the beginning of his career: “Do what you want, but make sure that they all look good.”
David LaChapelle - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
