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Dirty Pop
With his larger-than-life work having appeared in the world’s most prestigious publications, including Interview, Vogue, Arena and i-D, and having shot most of Hollywood’s A-list, from Madonna to Pamela Anderson, David LaChapelle is arguably photography’s brightest star. And it’s hardly surprising, considering his early career was guided by the late Andy Warhol when he first set foot in New York all those years ago. Indeed, LaChapelle has the same flamboyant air about him, with his photography fixated on the camp aesthetics of dirty, white-trash pop culture. Glamorous and usually showing a hell of a lot of flesh, LaChapelle's photos aren't just near the mark, they step all over it. Working largely in the realms of fashion, advertising and occasionally fine art, LaChapelle is known for his surrealist, often darkly humorous style. What makes his images all the more iconic, however, is that they contain anachronistic references that are as diverse as they are random, from the Bible to hardcore pornography, from the Renaissance to modern-day celebrity. This is no more evident than in his 2006 photo of drug-addled Courtney Love, who is pictured in blue as the Virgin Mary and cradling a dying 'Jesus Christ'. Even more gobsmacking, perhaps, is that LaChapelle’s Jesus Christ looks suspiciously like former Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who died of a heroin overdose in 1994. And just in case we didn't get the connection, LaChapelle has kindly placed pills on a table behind. Despite doing his best to be controversial, LaChapelle’s photos aren’t the result of an all-consuming ego-trip, but are a social commentary of the times. Touching on important issues such as gender and the fickle nature of status, his work holds a mirror up to the society we live in. Some snotty-nosed critics have slammed LaChapelle's work, suggesting that he's only talented for making beautiful people even more beautiful. But LaChapelle disagrees; according to the American artist, he is a 'concept' photographer, dressing his subjects up in fancy dress and allowing others to escape reality by creating a new one. With wildly outlandish settings and digitally manipulated backgrounds, there's no denying he achieves it. The boy wonder isn’t only enslaved to still photography, either; during his heady, fast-paced career LaChapelle has produced a number of music videos for his celebrity chums, including Jennifer Lopez, Enrique Iglesias, Amy Winehouse, Moby and Gwen Stefani. In signature LaChapelle style, the videos are bold, brash and about as camp as Elton John in drag. Indeed, if LaChapelle were a video himself, he’d be a big-budget, Hollywood number, with tons of special effects, make-up and diva-demands. Incidentally, LaChapelle has bipolar disorder, from which, he says, spring many of his wacky ideas. Fusing the imagery of fantasy with the politics of real life, nobody could say that LaChapelle didn’t know how to hold a camera.
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