“Our own salvation,” pop photographer David LaChapelle says, “can be found from… artists because they have something to give us.” Today, he speaks beyond the materiality of his hyperreal celebrity portraits and articulates his new art-making chapter in the middle of a Hawaiian rainforest.
In David LaChapelle’s land, a giant blow-up burger trumps a stiletto-clad model, a young Angelina Jolie crouches with a black sheep, and Paris Hilton wears a bikini printed with “EAT THE RICH.” The objective: that his photographs be understood by everyone “whether it’s a small, young person, from one not in the art world, from one in the art world, [or] someone older.” But recently, this has changed.
First, this hasn’t been attempted in a purely gallery context. Second, after he made the dance documentary Rize in 2005, critics noted a more pronounced social commentary in David’s works. In The Rape of Africa, Naomi Campbell reigns in a soap box-walled shanty. Recollections in America shows a 4th of July photo album inconspicuously ‘shopped to awry effect with guns, booze, and sex. As the flood in Deluge, the world is ending it seems. “Now that I’m not working for magazines… it’s very clear,” he refers to these more serious themes.
To reach this man known for his glitzy renderings of Madonna holding the Sacred Heart, of Courtney Love as The Pieta’s Virgin Mary, and of Jesus as a homeboy breaking bread in the hood, I had to dial the number of a cabin in the middle of a rainforest on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I say hello and apologize for a couple of failed attempts to connect. With the patience of an experienced man, one who has maybe mellowed down a bit, he greets back warmly. The sound waves carrying his voice arrive with a buzz and discordant echo.
He has just mounted a solo, Post Modern Pop Photography, at Tel Aviv Museum of Art and is yet to open another show at Spain’s Leyendecker Gallery this December, to be followed by one more in Germany early next year. Past all the raucous of his magazine days, his sked remains tight. I ask him to speak slower at times to which he so considerably obliges. “Well, I’ve traveled a lot in my life because of photography,” says David whose first contract was with Conde Nast Traveler magazine. He stuck his camera out under any weather with them for 10 years and continued to fly across the globe in the succeeding years of doing glam portraiture for countless other magazines.
Today, I barely spent my questions. He just knew what to say—“it’s sort of a last stop for me,” he says referring to his location in Maui, Hawaii—and I listen to a guru reciting proverbs to his student.
A Cabin of One’s Own
I’ve known New York City very well, but that was a city, and I’ve always dreamed of living in a cabin in the woods, by the water… in the middle of the rainforest… Every time I come here, I get to see… the certain place that I like to swim [in]… the certain trail that looks beautiful in the morning… In this new chapter in my life, I really had the desire to become intimate with this land… and it just also happens to be the most beautiful place that I have ever been [to] in terms of natural beauty. I really love cheese and, being a vegetarian, I grow all the food, and we have honeybees and goats and chickens and eggs… I wanna die here when the time comes.
Mythical Hero
Well, in instances after taking this picture, people would ask me about photographing Michael [Jackson], and I answered because I felt that… too many people were talking about him… I didn’t wanna be part of that dialogue… I think it’s better that people don’t know every detail about everything because it takes away some of the magic, and magic is something that Michael felt very strongly about. Michael had commissioned a lot of painters to paint him in heroic paintings. They’re in the manner of Renaissance, old master paintings… him surrounded by cherubs, of him with a sword-sort of Excalibur and as knight… He had never… had a photographer to work on something.
Lens Reporter
The pictures that I’ve done throughout the years –Lil Kim with Louis Vuitton [logos on her body], Amanda [Lepore] snorting diamonds… or [an] Alexander McQueen dress in a pile of garbage, consumerism, plastic surgery, decadence, greed—a lot of these themes are what was going on in America, the choices that the masses was making—fast food, obesity. They are these themes that are always coming back in my work.
“Critics usually call me overheated, and I’d rather be overheated than cool. There’s many cool contemporary art. They’re very cool. Cool doesn’t last. Cool turns cold…”
“ And I want people to comprehend that, to me, it’s not their failure if [my ideas are] not understandable…”
Dream Come True
Color, to me, was more accurate depiction…Black and White, to me, felt nostalgic for an earlier time…and I felt… I was contemporary… Way before there was… digital manipulation, I was manipulating colors in the darkroom…and playing with things that were very surreal and magical. So that always interested me in photography—creating these situations and these tableaus and then photographing them from my imagination and then…they are true. People would be surprised how little Photoshop I do. That’s why I filmed several of my bigger shoots—the making of the Deluge or the cover of the book with Courtney Love [Heaven to Hell]. I filmed [them] because I wanted people to see that it’s there; it’s not an illustration.
Pop Manifesto
…art for the art world that’s about the art world—I detest this kind of art. I think it’s for the ghetto. The fashion world’s a ghetto. I mean the art world is a ghetto. The sports world’s a ghetto. The world of finance is a ghetto… People have their stars and their heroes, and they’re so insulted. I’m much more interested in a world…I’m using … the visual vocabulary of the fashion magazines, of the celebrity portrait. I’m still utilizing all the things I learned working for Andy Warhol.. and I’m using that idea I learned a lot during so much advertising—how to sell something. Now, I’m selling my ideas. And I want people to comprehend that, to me, it’s not their failure if [my ideas are] not…understandable…
“I think the answers are gonna come from the artists-from the poets, from the playwrights, from the songwriters and the singers, and visual artists, and not the politician and the newscasters…”
Hot than Cold
I want my pictures to have a very, very clear idea from the first drawing that I make to the finished picture. I want it to be understood… Critics usually call me overheated, and I’d rather be overheated than cool. There’s many cool contemporary art. They’re very cool. Cool doesn’t last. Cool Turns cold… It’s a very challenging idea to photograph notions of life after death or that there’s more to the world than the material plane or that there’s a paradise being within you. We live in such a scary time, and even though some of the subjects I deal with [are] about this… I don't want it to frighten... The way I look at it is we have to accept things.
Child’s Play
This child in [my] photographs represents supreme knowledge… I don’t mean that we have to lose our Internet or that we have to lose our reason or act like babies… Picasso strived to paint in his life more like a child – there’s no editing, it’s direct right side of the brain activity that is automatic... There’s also something to be said about retaining our childlike qualities, of seeing the good in the world, and trust, and joy…and taking pleasure in simple things, and being present—when you’re eating and drinking… you’re being there—or time to create or play as a child would play in a sandbox…
Redemption Song
I think that there is so much to be learned from artists… They can sometimes bring into focus the confusion that we’re living in. Every artist at one point was a contemporary artist, and he was depicting the world from his experience… Art history is history. The contemporary art today is a reflection of the world that we live in. Even someone like Michael Jackson was an artist that was depicting our times… I think the answers are gonna come from the artists-from the poets, from the playwrights, from the songwriters and the singers, and visual artists, and not the politician and the newscasters…
Shoot The Moon
I’m just working on myself, first as a human being, then as an artist… After all these years of experience, I can make things look the way I want them to… I’m always aiming for the sublime, which is like trying to reach the moon, but you have to reach for the moon and make your goals very high. I’ve never been about material things like money…or name or status. My goal has always been for my pictures to give something to the world and not take something… And especially in this dark time, the artist has a choice. He can create ugly and confusion, or he can create or attempt to create clarity and beauty even when talking about subjects thought of as difficult. We can always use beauty as means to communicate and… it’s more subversive to do that. My goal is to become better doing that.
By Nante Santamaria