David LaChepelle

David LaChepelle was describes as the first person to ‘make photography modern’ and pushes the boundaries in his work as well as incorporating travelling the world to photograph his subjects. He currently lives and works in New York where he has photographed many celebrities in his career with inspiration from Andy Warhol and his work in popular culture which interests LaChepelle so much and inspires his work which you can see as his images are contemporary, surreal and sexy.

He came from a small town where he didn’t feel that he fitted in and felt that there was no other option but to go to New York where being different was celebrated. He went to an art school where he met Andy Warhol and got a photography job with his where his aim was to make everyone look good and also worked for magazines such as “Time Vogue” and “Vanity Affair”. He has input in every aspect of his images from hair and make up to lighting and fashion before experimenting to try and produce an image that hasn’t been made before.

He naturally crosses the art and fashion genres and makes a statement by having fun with his photos and subjects as well as thinking up many ideas and working with a team to construct images and backdrops. His mum first introduced him to photography as she used to use it as an escape to produce pictures that look better than the subject actually was and after 8/10 years of professional shooting including weddings, David LaChepelle changed his approach and considered himself as a conceptual photographer. Some of his projects are such large scale that it can take up to 2 days to complete a shoot and money is not a limit with collaborations with different artists helping to produce the back drops and sets.

Celebrities are aware of LaChepelle’s work and many want to be photographed by him as he goes the extra mile to make them feel comfortable, for example, by playing music on set as some of his shoots are very outgoing as he gets ideas from researching other artists and running ideas past the client for them to choose which they like the best.

“The easy part is taking all of the pictures. Putting it all together and pulling off the shoot is the hardest bit.”

LaChepelle likes to see people in his images look beautiful and sexy as you can tell a lot about a person from how far they are willing to go with a shoot in a way that doesn’t harm the person’s career. The people in his images are portrayed as larger than life so you never really know what you’re going to get with no repetition in his work. His images are described as highly polished with the colours being bright, rich, full on and saturated without over doing the post production and trying to get the right balance; he tries to achieve perfection when the image is taken and not in post production.

He never thought that his images would be shown in a gallery as he only ever aimed for them to be in magazines. He believes that the purpose of art is to make people think and his goal is to photograph people that show this and other people that make up the world of popular culture.

He has now moved on to other experimental areas of work such as music videos, which are darker and more serious although they are still heart felt.