VOGUE PARIS: DAVID LACHAPELLE
FALL 2006

DAVD LACHAPELLE

Mixing styles and eras, his surreal perspective throws a grenade -literally - at the American Way.
Something isn't quite right with these photos. They may appear to be banal pictures of American families at home, but anachronisms soon come to light. The images have been manipulated. The photographer has superimposed contemporary youths modeling brand name clothing onto anonymous snapshots from the 60s and 70s, and liberally garnished the frames with political flavor: beer cans and a T-shirt emblazoned with "Bush Kills;" a mushroom cloud as decoration; a gun and a hand grenade on a table - much less the granny brandishing a military carbine. The photo¬graphs are even more striking once you find out who took them: American photographer David LaChapelle. LaChapelle's world, which saw its genesis in the 1990s, is light years from this series. His usual playground is fashion, advertising, and portraiture. His trademark style might best be categorized from sickeningly artificial to overtly sexual: garish colors, kitsch sets, squeaky-clean surroundings, glossy surfaces, and minimalist graphics. Direct and snappy.

Does David LaChapelle have an evil twin? To see how this series created for Vogue Hommes International fits into his greater body of work, you have to start from h is somewhat underdeveloped reputation. First, many photography esthetes despise him, deeming his work vulgar: too kitsch, too glam, too flashy, too over-the-top. The particularly malicious love to ask who LaChapelle has copied the most - Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton among those most cited. Meaner still falsely claim that his aesthetic isn't even intentional. Or inter¬ject that with all the practice he's had imitating others, he's at least become a very talented copy artist.
Whatever. We note that American Photo magazine recently ranked David LaChapelle in their top ten list of most influ¬ential photo personalities (photographers, curators, agents and such) in the world. Awards and commissions rain down on him. The list of stars whose portraits he's done, models he's dressed (or undressed) and of magazines in which he's been published is impressive. He's also done a slew of advertis¬ing work for L'Oreal and Diesel jeans, and a bevy of music videos - notably Moby's Natural Blues, awarded MTV's Best Music Video of 2000. He is represented in the art world by two chic galleries: Tony Shafrazi in New York, Fahey/Klein in Los Angeles. He has two books edited by Callaway: LaChapelle Land (1996) and Hotel LaChapelle (1999), but the ultimate validation of his work comes out this year: an over¬sized (34.5 x 50cm) tome edited by German publisher Taschen, large format specialists, who printed a limited edition oE2,500 signed and numbered copies. First offered at an introductory price of 1,250 Euros, they will then sell at the list price of 1,500 Euros per volume. LaChapelle, Artists & Prostitutes contains no fewer than 698 scorching pages covering his short but already illustrious career of the man that Taschen have no qualms esteeming as "the Fellini of photography."

And so this young man with a pleasant face and a contagious smile, born in Connecticut in 1969, would seem to have some arguments of his own. He can also produce two or three heavyweights in his corner that should have his detractors biting their tongues. LaChapelle was only 16 years old when pop art guru Andy Warhol, undoubtedly the most influential artist of the latter half of the 20th century, published his images in Warhol's magazine Interview. Or Richard Avedon, perhaps the 20th century's most important portrait photog¬rapher, who shortly before his death in 2004, confided to the New York Times, "Of all the photographers who invent surre¬alist images, Mr. LaChapelle stands out as the one who has the potential to become the Magritte of the genre." Admittedly, that may have been a backhanded compliment; but finally, the late Helmut Newton had the most glowing praise for the young American: "There are a lot of young people producing photographic images these days. And a lot of gratuitous nudity, too. But there is one young photogra¬pher who makes me laugh: David LaChapelle. I think he's truly brilliant, very funny and good at what he does."

Accolades like these tell the story: LaChapelle isn't just your average successfully established California-based photographer. But he may not be as unblemished as his portraits of Whitney Houston and Madonna. Interviewed by the French paper Le Monde last year, he spoke of the 80s: "For' me, those years were marked by the loss of my partner who died of AIDS three months after being diagnosed. I never dared get tested before 1996. I don't know by what miracle I turned out to be HIV negative. That's when I aban¬doned black and white and started taking color photos." The former student of the School of Visual Arts in New York would really come into his own on the shoot of Dirty (2004), a music video for Christina Aguilera. Between takes, the youngsters danced backstage. "I couldn't wait for the take to end so I could turn around and watch them. Dancers have always fascinated me, ever since I was a child." For the video, the dance was a variation of hip-hop known as 'strippln" or 'krumping,' which imitates the gestures of a stripper but accelerates them, giving the dance a surreal dimension. Strippin' is the core theme of his 2005 documentary, Rize, shot in digital video in the African-American ghetto of South Central Los Angeles, with a freedom of approach that is anything but Hollywood-inspired. Rize follows the harsh realities of youths in the ghetto. Before reaching cinemas, it had already been noticed at Sundance, followed by European festivals in Locarno and Deauville. Whereas his photos might celebrate the America the Conqueror that some find distaste¬ful, Rize shows another face of America - and serves to remind us that ever since his debut in photography, LaChapelle has frequently worked with artists from the rap scene. It is in this context- an artist in the process of becoming more radical - that we should view the unique series of photos featured here. The colors are no longer garish, bur washed out. Instead of visiting the homes of stars, we are invited into middle class households. As LaChapelle expresses in Rize, the "American Way" and consumer society have spawned a monstrous America. In any event, this alien series touches some of LaChapelle's core issues, as summed up by Richard Avedon: here is a photographer who loves incongru¬ity; his collages of motifs seem to have nothing to do with one another. From this perspective he can be considered a flashy heir to the surrealists.