“Fellini of Photography” – David LaChapelle | Melissa Reid: Art Portfolio Blog

In 1996, an article once called him the “Fellini of Photography”, a phrase that continues to be applied to him.; LaChapelle is an internationally known for his exceptional talent in combining a unique hyper-realistic aesthetic with profound socoail messages. He is an American commercial and fine-art photographer, as well as a music video and film director and an artist. As a photographer, he is best known for his work because of its social message and its reference towards art history. This description is said because of his “kitsch pop surrealism” style mixed with his photographic style of “hyper-real and slyly subversive” gives a new look at the message he is portraying.

As a youth growing up, LaChapelle faced many struggles. He moved about greatly, and was a constant victim of bullying; as an artist, he tried to put this behind him and turned to art instead. As he grew, he attending a variety of different schools, from public schools ranging across Connecticut to North Carolina School of the Arts to The School of Visual Arts in New York City. As his adventures grew, his abilities widen, and he feel in love with art; His first photograph was of his mother, Helga LaChapelle, on a family vacation in Puerto Rico.

His photography career bloomed in the 1980’s when his artwork began being shown off in New York galleries. During this time, his work caught the eye of Andy Warhol, who in turn offered him his first job as a photographer at Interview Magazine. During his time here, his photographs of celebrities gained positive attention and he was soon creating and shooting some of the most memorable advertising campaigns of his generation. His work has graced the covers and pages of Italian and French Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, GQ, and i-D, photographing some of the most recognizable people ranging from Tupac, Madonna, Eminem, Lance Armstrong, Pamale Anderson, Philip Johnson, Lil’ Kim, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hilary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Britteny Spears, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Andy Warhol himself, to name a few.

After gaining a good career in photography, LaChapelle decided to branch off into another world of art and direct videos, events, and films. During this time, he directing music videos for Christina Aguilera, Amy Whinehouse, and more. He later created a short documentary that was an award winner at Sundance from which he developed RIZE, a distribution of Lion’s Gate Films.

Below are various comments stated by a variety of opinions on LaChapelles work, especially based on “RIZE”.

“David LaChapelle’s RIZE is a visual miracle; an unexpected knockout as social history. An important film.”
-Rolling Stone

“Eye-popping visuals and an appreciation of social complexities combine for an entirely satisfying experience that will bring audiences out of their seats in a good way.”
-Variety

“LaChapelle reveals he has the documentary filmmaker’s gift for charting the evolution of a new form of artistic expression as a way of illuminating an entire world… a moving documentary.”
-Los Angeles Times

“It’s also the most infectiously energetic and inspiring doc I’ve seen in years.”
-The Village Voice

In 2006, LaChapelle decided to go back to his original focus and put his time into fine art photography, and by doing so, had had the record breaking solo museum exhibitions at the Barbican Museum, London, Palazzo Reale, Milan, ME and many more! In 2011, he had major exhibitions in New York and Perto Rico, in Prague, Stolkholm, Israel, all leading to him being awarded artist of the year! In the year 2014, he released his new exhibition series “Land Scape” in New York, Vienna, London and Paris.

Over his 30+ years of work, LaChapelle continues to be inspired and amazed by everything around him from art history to street culture, from the metaphysical to immortality, all in which he projects an image of twenty-first century pop culture that is both loving and critical through his work. He is known as simply one of the only photographic artist working today that has successfully maintained a profound impact throughout generations in the realm of celebrity photography, as well as the contemporary art intelligentsia. He is said now to have moved to a “very isolated part of Hawaii in this forest”, where he thinks of himself as a farmer; he is living his life in a reborn way, as he feels hes been reborn as a new artist as his career expands and gives him new opportunities. He is starting back at galleries in his career and feels excited about being, “back to where I started, where I very first started in galleries when I was a kid. It’s just come full circle.”

As an artist, his own unique style is filled with sensuality, fantasy, and dark adventure, packed with accessible popular images, and communicates with a wide and variegated audience. This can be seen in two examples of his work below.

Poems Of My Soul and Immortality

2009

In this picture, LaChapelle choose a forest scene that he created into something new. The overall lighting in the image is dark around the outside, but is lightened in the center from a transparent box, only visible from the lights branching from corner to corner. The light in the picture is also travelled upwards from the illuminated butterflies flying from the box. The composition itself is a man leaning against a tree reaching inwards toward the central box. This makes the image successful for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the figure subject is looking into the photograph rather then outwards, pulling the viewers focus inwards with him. The rule of thirds is followed by the figure and the box falling on the bottom horizontal dissection line, and the figure himself lying almost directly on the right vertical line. How LaChapelle’s style is seen in this photograph is the overall image; the image captures fantasy by the view of it, and from the light created box and butterflies. With this sense of fantasy in mind, the sense of a dark adventure can be displayed from the figures movement in towards the unknown box from his out stretched arm gesture in an almost curious but sensual pose. This image overall can be visually appealing to a wide variety of people, from youth to elder, as many people can take their own opinion and take from the picture, figure, and box itself.

My Own Marilyn

2002

In this piece, LaChapelle captures the viewer’s eye in an amazing way in my opinion. I love how he took something well known and created his own version of it. The composition itself if very simplistic, but the overall message is very intense. He took a well known figure, and image, and changed it into something beautifully different in its own unique way. What makes the image so appealing is the overall brightness and message seen; the colours are neon blues, pinks and yellows, all of which grab the viewers attention. He secondly then chose a recognizable image and made it to his own perspective, sending a new message to the audience. This follows his style of popular imagery that communicates with a large audience of different ranges.

As an artist I really enjoy the work created by LaChapelle, and very pleased with the appearance and messages he creates. I like how he captures very interesting scenes and adds a new dept and meaning to them. I also enjoy how he creates hybrid pieces by capturing an image and then afterwords adding in details and images to add interest and to add a deeper message into the picture. I feel a great interest in his work and would use him as inspiration in my own pieces for photography.

Other photographs I liked by LaChapelle: