“I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.” -David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle is a prolific style bending, surrealist advertising and commercial fashion photographer whose work redefined the 1990s. The New York Times put it this way, “LaChapelle is certain to influence the work of a new generation…in the same way that Mr. Avedon pioneered so much of what is familiar today.”
Fearing AIDS
For fifteen years LaChapelle was terrified that he had the AIDS virus. In a New York Times article by Guy Trebay (May 27, 2011), he said, “It’s the luck of the draw, really,” he said. “I was 15 back then and in New York and having sex.” He was at a gallery for the Times’ interview. “I never got tested, and for 15 years I just assumed I was going to die.”
He finally got tested and found out that he did not have AIDS. He did lose a lot of friends to the virus during his downtown New York life in the 80s.
Perfectionist
David LaChapelle is determined to get exactly the image he wants. All of the details matter. The socialite and frequent model for his work, Daphne Guinness said of working with him, “David is oddly delicate, so highly strung, so highly involved in his work.” She talked about how he works, “On a shoot in Ireland we were shooting for 72 hours without a break, and I had a bleeding eye by the end,” Ms. Guinness said. “David has done that to me quite a few times. I’ve been in a tank of water going up and down for 11 hours. He’s got it in his mind, whatever it is, and you know he’s going to get there by the end.”
Overwork
David LaChapelle made millions of dollars with his photographic vision. He invested it in a movie about a form of urban dance that he filmed in South Central Los Angeles. The movie, “Rize,” did not do well in finding an audience.
For 20 years he worked long, 14-hour days of photography and making music videos for the likes of Elton John, Christina Aguilera, Blink 182, No Doubt, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse and many others.
He became lost after so many years of long days and practically no time off “I did not know how to say ‘no.’ I worked 14 months without taking a day of vacation,” he said. “I was 30 pounds overweight and drinking so much. I was not nice to the people around me, and I was even worse to myself.”
He was tired so he left a career that any photographer would see with envy in their eyes and in 2006, he went to Hawaii. There he started an organic farm from about a dozen acres gleaned from a former nudist colony in a remote part of Maui.
Madonna
Once he was on a telephone call with Madonna about a music video the two were working on, she began badgering him about the project. LaChapelle took the flip phone from his ear and closed it.
“My agent was shocked,” he said. “ ‘Did you just hang up on Madonna?’ It was a pivotal moment in my life because it was the first time I said I don’t want to do this anymore.”
It was liberating, he added, “to think that I didn’t have to work for pop stars or magazines anymore and that I would never have to shoot the latest video by Britney Spears again.”
Early days
David LaChapelle got his start after dropping out of high school at North Carolina School of the Arts and moving to New York. Andy Warhol saw his first exhibit of photography at Gallery 303. Warhol hired him to make photographs for Interview magazine.
Controversy has been a hallmark of LaChapelle’s work. He made a photo for Diesel called “Navy Gay Kiss” of the real-life couple Bob and Rod Jackson-Paris in front of a submarine with sailors standing on its deck. The buzz around it not only did a great job for Diesel it also propelled him into getting more work in advertising. He was inspired by Alfred Eisenstaedt‘s famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square in August of 1945 when Japan surrendered to the United States ending World War II.
Opening photo
Top row, left to right: Michael Jackson, Dua Lipa 2020, Leonardo DiCaprio 1995, Tupac Shakur 1996, Courtney Love “Pieta” 2006.
Bottom row, left to right: Lady Gaga 2009, Uma Thurman 1997, Cameron Diaz 1997.
Sources: David LaChapelle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Reed
