Interview

Beware the glossy sheen of David LaChapelle's photographs, for behind that brilliant gleam hides a cutting edge. Perhaps best known for his high-concept fashion and celebrity images, LaChappelle has always seen himself as an outsider in that world. Three years ago he took a voluntary break from magazine work to focus on a furious schedule of exhibitions, often in far-flung locations such as Belfast, Ireland, and Guadalajara, Mexico. LaChapelle's interest in classical European painting and his identification with the disenfranchised is displayed in his latest exhibition, a floridly political series of images about the diamond and gold industries that he has titled "The Rape of Africa." (THE RAPE OF AFRICA [LEFT] MULTIMEDIA STUDIES [BELOW] COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND THE DAVID DESANCTIS GALLERY)


KEN MILLER: The raw, collaged images in this show seem to offer a window into your working process. How much diagramming goes into each of your photographs?

DAVID LACHAPELLE: I went to art high school and thought I'd be a painter. Unfortunately I didn't finish high school, but that's always been part of my work. I use watercolors to establish the tableaus, which gives me freedom as I go about the work.

I really thought of the painting as a bridge to get more tactile with the photograph. I longed to touch things again and I felt like I'd pushed the digital imagery as far as I could.

MILLER: Can you give me an example?

LACHAPELLE: I have an image of Michael Jackson as an archangel, where I didn't even photograph him. He was a person living in biblical extremes: the most famous person on the planet, beloved in an almost devotional way, who then fell almost to the lowest depths of society; going from a dark skinned black man to a pale skinned white man... and all the while singing these songs about healing!

In the Martin Bashir interview, there's a kid with cancer without any hair. Then you see him later and he's better, and his family said that it was Michael's belief that cured him. Which, I'm Catholic, and healing the sick is one of the criteria for sainthood. Not to say that he really was a saint, but he was so otherworldly and certainly fits the requirements for martyrdom... He really brings into question all of these issues of gender and race, which are such hot button issues of society. Why can't a man hold a child's hand? Does it have to be erotic? I think that says as much about society as it does about him. 
 
MILLER: So you created a portrait with Michael ever sitting for you? It sounds more like an effigy.

LACHAPELLE: For the picture I mentioned before, I used a Michael Jackson impersonator and spent weeks and weeks moving pixels around to create the face of Michael Jackson circa 1990. It's a photograph, but it's a not a portrait, so it sort of redefines what a photograph is. We spent so much time going back in and putting in details and flaws, and there's no question that it's Michael Jackson. But he never posed for it. It's a very strange concept. In a way, it's going back to painting. So it was time to go back to these more raw things like the collages.

MILLER: Do you consider yourself a political photographer?

LACHAPELLE: Well, there's a stigma attached to my work from having done fashion for so many years. I learned a lot from working for Andy at Interview. I remember he said, "Do what you want, but make everyone look good." So I use beauty in a seductive way. There's nothing wrong with adornment or glamour, but when it becomes the goal, you have decadence, which is destructive. The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas. I've always had my own agenda. In the fashion world, I was always an outsider, but I made people look good, so I had a career. But the themes were always there.

MILLER: I'm curious about the Damien Hirst reference in one of the new photographs...

LACHAPELLE: It's an homage more than anything. I don't think anyone could have swung the pendulum further [than he did], as far as the idea of art as a commodity. The skull made of diamonds really is the end-all. It summed up [what was happening], and I think that should have put a stop to it all. I thought there would be a reaction and the pendulum would swing backward. We live in an un-shockable society–Daniel Pearl being beheaded is the number one most downloaded video–and the art world is a place where people can make sense of the world we live in. So now I think we can make a return to the bad words in art, like the Romantic...


"The Rape of Africa" is on display at David DeSanctis Gallery in Los Angeles from September 12-October 31.

Ken Miller is the editor of SHOOT; Photography of the Moment from Rizzoli International and Revisionaries, A Decade of Art in Tokion from Abrams Image.