David LaChapelles strange visions of a continent
f the artists and photographers working today, they don't come more in your face, more unapologetically trashy, more instantly recognisable than David LaChapelle. The self-anointed "Fellini of photography" is known as a bold recorder of our times, an artist who fuses the perceived glamour of contemporary celebrity with the physicality and complex compositions of the Italian Renaissance artists. Full of sly humour, his photographs both celebrate and subvert the notion of fame. With their staged artificiality and surrealist flourishes, some teeter in the brink of tastelessness while others deliberately turn your stomach.
Among his muses have been the model and actress Pamela Anderson who, under his direction, was photographed in bikini and stilettos wrestling with a bloodied, obese woman dressed as a pig, and the surgically-upholstered transsexual model Amanda Lepore, whom LaChapelle re-cast as Andy Warhol's Marilyn.
His photographs, whether celebrity portraits or pictures of anonymous Americans, are defined by his singular style: garish lighting, kaleidoscopic colours and elaborate compositions awash with symbolism. His pictures seem to glow from within, making everything around them seem shadowy and dull by comparison. Eyes shine, teeth glisten, skin shimmers. Extraordinary in their detail, his pictures leave nothing to the imagination and they are unequivocal about their meaning.
Not for LaChapelle the conceptual obfuscation of his artist contemporaries. He prefers direct communication with his audience, making clear statements about wealth, celebrity and the fine line between commodification and prostitution.
He has said of his portraits: "I would always try to define that person within the portrait, flattering or not, to capture them. If that celebrity were to die, this would be the image that summed them up."
Such images would include Sophie Dahl in a bath of baked beans; Naomi Campbell in a bikini astride a giant chocolate bunny; Courtney Love, bruised, naked and clawing around in the dirt; Angelina Jolie having her breasts nibbled by a horse; Kanye West wearing a crown of thorns; Marilyn Manson as a lollipop lady; Paris Hilton crouched on the floor, naked except for the leather bindings that render her immobile. LaChapelle's statement may smack of hubris, though he's not far wrong. These are images that, once they are seen, remain emblazoned on your consciousness.
Still, his detractors have accused him of style over substance, worse still of hypocrisy. LaChapelle may mock the cult of celebrity but he has been welcomed into its inner circle and has created the images that have immortalised its biggest stars.
His music videos have similarly bolstered the mythology of assorted pop icons from Britney Spears to Elton John, the latter for whom he has worked with pretty much consistently for the last ten years in some of the most expensive stage productions ever seen. His video for Christina Aguilera's single "Dirrty" single-handedly obliterated her saccharine girl-next-door image, replacing it with that of sexual dynamo through a film that depicted her in the midst of a post-apocalyptic orgy.
Accusations of misogyny have also been levelled at LaChapelle, who invariably arranges for his female models to wear as little as possible, preferably with a breast or two on display. Often they are posed in passive sexual positions. Some complain that the nudity and porno-chic imagery is gratuitous though, of course, his defenders call it kitsch.
In recent years, however, LaChapelle has seemed, on the surface at least, to develop a conscience. That's not to say he has mellowed – his pieces remain just as startling in terms of content and style – though a clear departure has been made from his trademark preoccupations of popular culture and materialism and into the realms of the social and political.
Perhaps the biggest change is in the work that he now chooses not to do. In 2005, following the release of his film debut Rize, a life-affirming and hugely successful documentary about krumping, the rubber-limbed freestyle dance craze sweeping the South Central area of Los Angeles, LaChapelle resolved that there would be no more fashion shoots, no celebrity portraits, no corporate promos (LaChapelle has shot commercial advertising campaigns for the likes of Lexus, Motorola, HBO and H&M). And, following a falling out with Madonna over the video to her single "Hung Up", there would be no more music videos.
"I quit on the set," he tells me. "Every time I worked with her it was such a miserable experience. We had had a meeting beforehand and agreed on what we were going to do, and then we went on set and she just started yelling at me. There was so much tension and stress I just walked off and didn't go back. But the truth is that I have to thank Madonna for helping me to make a decision. Throughout my career I have had this false notion that I have had to do everything I was asked to do, but I decided that now was the time to stop, to take a break. All the signs, from the success of the film to how unhappy I was on fashion and video shoots, were telling me to stop."
LaChapelle retreated to his home in a Hawaii, a place out in the woods with no phone line or electricity. He read books, went on walks and revelled in the silence. Then, after a few months, his agent tracked him down and informed him that a gallery in Berlin wanted to put on a show of his work.
Early in his career, LaChapelle would put on one-man shows of his photographs around New York loft-spaces. though there was little interest shown back then. "My last show was in 1991; no one came. At the time you couldn't do fine art if you were a commercial artist. After that I decided that magazines would be my gallery. My goal was to photograph the people that interested me and the people who made up the world of popular culture that we lived in. I wanted to document America's obsessions and compulsions. Working for magazines pulls in big audiences. It's the difference between a pop star playing in a bar or in a big stadium, and it was exciting."
Even so, his desire to be a fine artist never went away. Recently, 15 years later, LaChapelle found himself in the novel position of being offered his own show. He returned to his Los Angeles studio and set to work on a series of projects. Among his them was the Awakened series, a collection of photographs which had fully-dressed and conspicuously non-famous people suspended in flotation tanks. In 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina, came his Deluge. He created a composition that echoed the French neo-classical painter Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, and depicted naked city-dwellers seeking refuge from a flood, clutching at telegraph poles, scrambling on to cars and clasping broken advertising hoardings for Burger King and Starbucks.
Over the past three years a revivified LaChapelle has immersed himself in a punishing schedule of new projects and worldwide exhibitions. Now, finally, his work comes to London. His new exhibition is called The Rape of Africa, named after its overwhelmingly huge, hyper-real centrepiece, a tribute to Botticelli's painting Venus and Mars.
In Botticelli's version Venus, the goddess of love, lies across from Mars, the god of war, in a meadow. Mars is unarmed and in a post-coital slumber, while Venus is awake and alert. Around them satyrs play with Mars's armour; one blows a trumpet into Mars's ear but he cannot be woken. The message is that love has conquered war. In LaChapelle's tableau, a beautifully attired and regal-looking Naomi Campbell sits across from a sleeping man who is surrounded by gold, the spoils of war. A hole blasted out of the wall behind them provides a window onto a parched land smothered in heavy machinery and devoid of plant life. The couple are flanked by children, two of whom carry machine-guns.
Here love clearly has not conquered; the ravaged backdrop, the armed children and the piles of gold point to a land and a culture destroyed by global consumerism, notably the gold and diamond industries, and war. Meanwhile Campbell, in all her exotic finery, represents the objectification of African women, by Western culture, as their homes and countries are torn apart.
On one hand The Rape of Africa is typical LaChapelle with its gaudy aesthetic and flawless, glossy style, but it is also an angry political statement. On a personal level it announces LaChapelle as no longer a celebrity snapper, but an important contemporary artist more than capable of bringing intellectual and historical weight to his art.
Reactions to the image have been largely positive, though LaChapelle notes that there have been dissenters. "One critic said that having Naomi Campbell sitting there looking beautiful wasn't an honest representation of people in Africa. I asked him: 'If it was a woman with a distended belly and open sores, would that be more profound for you?' We see those images every day, on the TV and in newspapers. I have this idea that you can use glamour and still have it represent something that matters. I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word. It's following the same idea as murals where you have a series of narrative pictures. They are telling stories and communicating with people, which is always what I have set out to do."