David LaChapelle

At 61 years old, David LaChapelle has this physical status:

David LaChapelle (born March 11, 1963) is an American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video producer, and film producer. He is best known for his photography, which often refers to art history but also conveys social information.

His photographic style has been characterized as "hyper-real and sly subversive" and as "kitsch pop survival."

LaChapelle, once known as the Fellini of photography, has worked for international publications and has had his work on view in commercial galleries and museums around the world.

Early life

David LaChapelle was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Philip and Helga LaChapelle; he has a sister Sonja and a brother Philip. His mother, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrived on Ellis Island in the early 1960s, was a transplant. His family lived in Hartford until he was nine years old. He has said he loved the Connecticut public schools and thrived in their art program as a child and a teenager, but bullying has risen. Then and his family lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, before moving to Fairfield, Connecticut. He was mocked in his North Carolina high school for his sexuality. When he was 15 years old, he went from home to become a busboy at Studio 54 in New York City. He later returned to North Carolina to enroll in the North Carolina School of the Arts.

Helga's mother was the subject of his first photograph on a family holiday in Puerto Rico. LaChapelle says that his mother was responsible for influencing his art direction in the way she planned family photos in his youth.

Personal life

LaChapelle suffers bipolar disorder, but he claims that drugs don't work for him, he's careful to track his mental health. In the mid-1980s, LaChapelle lost his boyfriend of the time to AIDS. He migrated to London, where the city's counterculture was incredibly influential in shaping his aesthetic. "I thought I'd seen it all." The level of ingenuity and insanity when I first arrived in London were on a whole other world." He was particularly struck by the culture's insistence on originality rather than copying. Los Angeles had been "the exact opposite" for him. He married Marilyn's female publicist while living in London; the relationship lasted a year.

LaChapelle left Los Angeles in 2006 after being stranded. In this jungle, he was taken to a "very remote portion of Hawaii." It's off the grid, biodiesel cars, solar-powered, growing our own food, and 100% eco friendly. "I'm a farmer now," I thought. LaChapelle's change in direction brought him right back to his roots. When he was in Hawaii, a long-serving colleague welcomed him to shoot for a gallery, something he hadn't done since being a fledgling photographer in New York. "I was actually shocked," LaChapelle said. "I'm so popular as a commercial artist, as a fashion and celebrity photographer, that a gallery will consider me seriously." It's like being reborn; it's like rebirth; it's like starting over. It's back to where I started, where I first got into galleries when I was a kid. It's just come full circle."

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Photographic career

LaChapelle was involved with the 303 Gallery, which also featured artists such as Doug Ait. LaChapelle was given employment with the magazine after people from Interview magazine saw his work on display. Andy Warhol, who hired him as a photographer for Interview while he was still in high school, met LaChapelle when he was 17 years old. According to LaChapelle, Warhol reportedly told LaChapelle, "Do whatever you like." Just make sure everybody looks well." LaChapelle's photos debuted on pages and pages of magazines such as Details, GQ, i-D, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Face, Vanity Fair, Vogue Italia, and Vogue Paris.

LaChapelle's pictures have been described as "meticulously produced in a high-gloss, color-popping, hyper-realistic style," and his photographs are known to, "crackle with subpoena – or at least amusing – concepts, rude energy, and merriment. They are brimming with life." David LaChapelle of Diesel shot the iconic 'kissing sailors' commercial in 1995. It was staged at the peace festival of World War II, and it became one of the first public advertisements to feature a gay or lesbian couple kissing. A large part of the controversy came due to it being revealed in the United States at a time when don't ask, don't tell protest debates, which culminated in the US government's refusal to exclude openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual people from military service. The advertisement was praised for its "overarching tone of heavy-handed humour and sarcasm" in a long article published by frieze in 1996. In September 2011, when the don't ask, don't tell law was finally withdrawn by President Barack Obama, Renzo Rosso, the company's founder and president, who had endorsed and called for the campaign, said, "people wouldn't stop expressing their dissatisfaction with the advertisement." Now it is officially recognized."

1995: Frensh photo and American Photo Magazines "Best New Photographer of the Year Award" at the VH-1 Fashion Awards "Applied Photography of the Year Award" for Moby's "Nature Blues" at the MTV Europe Music Awards. Best Photo of the Year Award" for Moby's "Best Photo of the Year Award" (1996).

Themes in LaChapelle's art photography, which he has honed in his Maui home, include: liberation, gratitude, paradise, and consumerism. It is clear that LaChapelle's "new direction" highlights his passion and knowledge of both contemporary practice and art history.

"both bizarre and stunning have created a singular style that is original, original, and unmistakeable" in LaChapelle's photographs. His photographs have been collected in a number of books. LaChapelle Land (1996) was selected as one of 101 "Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century" by a librarian and is "highly coveted by collectors." Hotel LaChapelle (1999), his second book, was described as a "garish, sexy, enchanting ride." "Almost twice as many photographs as its predecessors were included in Heaven to Hell (2006)," the visionary photographer's "intuitive collection of new work." A limited-edition of LaChapelle, Artists, and Prostitutes (2006), a limited-edition, with a signed, numbered book, contains 688 pages of photographs from 1985 to 2005. Taschen's Artists and Prostitutes collection included a snapshot of the publisher Benedikt Taschen in a sadomasochism exhibition.

LaChapelle has returned to a focus on fine art photography in the last decade and has exhibited his work in numerous galleries and museums. LaChapelle has had solo museum exhibitions at the Barbican Museum in London, 2006, Kausthaus Wien, 2001, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei (2005), and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel (2009), in which he was named artist of the year. Both the National Portrait Museum in London and the Bayerische Staatsoper Portrait Gallery in Munich have permanent acquisitions.

LaChapelle's exhibition at the Lever House in New York, as well as retrospectives at the Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Hanagaram Design Museum in Seoul, and Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague, by 2011. In the ensuing years, LaChapelle's works were also on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles (2012), the Musée d'Orsay in Paris (2013), and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. (2014). His retrospective at Fotografiska Museet in Sweden (2013) was the museum's biggest solo artist show to ever be on display.

In 2014, LaChapelle's 'Land Scape' exhibition in New York, Vienna, London, and Paris premiered. Other exhibitions include OstLicht Galerie fur Fotografie in Vienna, Austria, MAC Lima in Peru, Palazzo delle Esposizione in Rome, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Chile. LaChapelle's work was on display at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, DSC Gallery in the Czech Republic, at various locations in Montevideo, Uruguay, and New York's Edward Hopper House. In 2018, LaChapelle exhibited ten of his series for a few months. In one big exhibit titled, Good News For Modern Man, in the Groninger Museum (The Netherlands), the Groninger Museum has a special exhibit named for modern man.

LaChapelle cites a number of artists who have inspired his photography. Andrea Pozzo and Caravaggio were two of his favorites in a 2009 interview. Salvador Dal, Jeff Koons, Michelangelo, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol have all influenced LaChapelle's work, according to a reviewer. Of all the photographers who had invented surreal photographs, Richard Avedon said that LaChapelle has the ability to be the genre's Magritte. Helmut Newton has also contributed to the discussion over LaChapelle, stating, "He [LaChapelle] isn't thrilled by new photography." There are a lot of pornographic pictures taken by young people today... A majority of the nudity is gratuitous.' David LaChapelle, however, is someone who makes me laugh out loud. "I think he is brilliant, very funny, and well-behaved." LaChapelle is Catholic and often uses religious symbolism in his art.

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Awards

• Doctorate in Fine Arts (Hon.) from UNCSA, 2015
• Young Photographers Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award
• Artist of the Year, American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2012
• National Geographic Photography Seminar, Featured Speaker, 2012
• GLAAD Vito Russo Award for Outstanding Contributions Toward Eliminating Homophobia, 2006
• 13th Annual MVPA Awards- Winner, Director of the Year- Best Rock Video of the Year for No Doubt's "It's My Life", 2004
• Special Juried Prize Mountain Film, Telluride, 2004
• Special Juried Recognition, Sundance Film Festival, 2004
• Best Documentary, Aspen Film Festival, 2004
• 12th Annual MVPA Awards, Adult Contemporary Video of the Year, Elton John's "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore", 2003
• Best Video for Moby's "Natural Blues", the MTV Europe Music Awards, 2000
• Best "Cutting Edge Essay" and "Style Photography" at Life magazine's Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for Magazine Photography (the Eisies)
• Art Directors Club Award for Best Book Design for LaChapelle Land, 1997