Andy's Newsletter ✌️ Naked Models, Golden Dildos: Catching up with David LaChapelle
We go way back, David and me.
Previously, on Andy’s Newsletter: “Why can’t my baby daughter dress for Halloween as Gordy the chimpanzee from the film Nope?”
Andy’s Newsletter ✌️
Naked Models, Golden Dildos: Catching up with David LaChapelle
Last weekend I saw the photographer David LaChapelle speak at the opening of his first major museum solo exhibition in North America at Fotografiska New York. The show, “make BELIEVE,” features 150 works, including new creations and now iconic classic images you would likely recognize even if you’re not immediately familiar with LaChapelle: Kanye West as Jesus for the cover of Rolling Stone in 2006, Tupac Shakur in the shower in 1996, Naomi Campbell pouring milk on herself on the kitchen floor in 1999, Amanda Lepore as Andy Warhol’s Marilyn, the list goes on and on… he’s photographed seemingly every notable celebrity from the mid-1990s until today and still going. In February 2022, he photographed Lizzo for the cover of Rolling Stone.
I’ve been an avid fan of LaChappelle since the mid-1990s during what one could argue was the peak of magazine publishing and celebrity portraiture. To put it another way, I don’t think we’ll ever have another Rolling Stone magazine. We’ll never have another rock and roll magazine. But also, more to my point here — with all love and admiration for the decades of Rolling Stone prior to the 90s — we’ll never have another Britney Spears silently sensationalizing us from the glossy pages of a monthly magazine. And we’ll never have another David LaChapelle to shoot those photos or ANYTHING else like it.
While a bulk of LaChapelle’s work is for sure “celebrity portraiture”, these photographs are far from the soft focus glamor shots you’d see in rags like Entertainment Weekly or People. To put it very plainly, LaChapelle’s portraits are artistic. These 90s works were creative, atmospheric, over the top, saturated in color and light — each image was a tableau vivant and hyper-modern, which is to say they felt new and exciting. And judging by LaChapelle’s current exhibition !!spanning 40 years!!, these images stillllll feel new and exciting. And to do that with pop stars feels like an even larger accomplishment, not because these celebrities are famous or good looking, but precisely in spite of that. He made them interesting and evocative despite their ubiquity.
Speaking of celebrity
It was Warhol who first recognized LaChapelle when he was just 17 — hired him to work for Interview Magazine. And LaChapelle built his career from there, shooting covers for pretty much every major magazine, advertising for global brands, producing and directing an award winning feature documentary, and exhibiting in museums and galleries all over the world.
But today, in the continued decline and cultural irrelevance of magazines and print publishing — even art and fashion websites are being crushed by the endless scroll of social media — I can’t help but wonder how an artist and storyteller like LaChapelle would develop and emerge today? Without the clearly defined path of magazine covers and celebrity portraits to hitch one’s wagon to?
So I looked to David LaChapelle, 59 years old, still boyish, and casual in clothes and posture, and I asked: “What advice would you give to someone like you trying to make it today?”
“That’s a tough question,” LaChapelle said. “You have to scroll through so much bad shit to see anything good. And you have to build yourself as a brand. It’s really hard to be seen. I would say, ‘Invest in yourself.’ And I mean that literally, financially. When I was taking photographs in my dorm room I really wanted these big wings, angel wings, and I couldn’t find them anywhere but I found someone who could make them so I took out every dollar I had, every penny, and I paid to get these wings made and took my photos and exhibited them in my friends loft.”
In a strange, only-in-New-York-full-circle-kind-of-way, that loft where he had his early DIY exhibitions was only two blocks from where we were sitting at his full museum takeover and six-floor-exhibition at Fotografiska.
Even stranger perhaps, I too felt like I had completed a weird circle talking with David LaChapelle — now 20 years after I first interviewed him for my college magazine.
Flat circles, overlapping
David LaChapelle had come to speak at Pratt Institute and my friends and I were so excited we stayed up the whole night before decorating one of the photo studios we had commandeered to host an afterparty for his talk. We weren’t sure we’d be able to convince him to come by, but after his talk he very graciously accepted our invitation and a mob of students and David and his entourage walked across campus to our party: drinks, fog machines, lights, disco balls, a photo backdrop, I think someone was dressed Santa and we had a human dreidel too? It was Christmas time.
Everyone had a blast. And LaChapelle and his friends, including a topless Amanda Lepore, mingled and danced. My friends and I were just thrilled. We had pulled it off. But I still wanted an interview for the school magazine.
“Come by the studio tomorrow,” LaChapelle said. “We’ll talk then.”
Needless to say, interviewing him at his studio during a photoshoot was an incredible experience, which I only touched on in the interview we published in the school magazine: naked models, golden dildos, cocaine on tables, and as a 19-year-old I must admit I was a little spooked when one of the androgynous models followed me into the bathroom asking, “Need a hand, sweetie?” It was kind of wild. It was super cool. So damn New York. Very much a Warhol Factory vibe. And I’m super grateful for all of it.
Jump cut: Fotografiska’s sixth floor in 2022 and David LaChapelle circles back to my question about advice for today’s emerging artists, saying:
“It’s important to make opportunities for yourself. No one is going to do that for you. You have to trust yourself and follow your instinct and make your own opportunities…And I remember that party at Pratt.”
Goddamn right you remember that party, David. Goddamn right.
Three other things:
My dear friend Andy Sinboy dropped a new punk rock album! Check out Subnormal by Bad Decisions (on Spotify). And watch the music video! My favorite tune right now is “Dog Day,” but the whole damn album reeks like some kind of drug-addled sexy angry surfer house party on the coast of Spain. Ya know, if you’re into that sort of thing. Bravo, Andy! And for those of you in Bucharest, the album release party is Tuesday!
As you know, Lebanon’s banks have locked most depositors out of their accounts since a financial crisis took hold three years ago. According to Reuters, people can withdraw up to $800 a month. And now citizens are robbing banks for their own money? Most recently, “Sally Hafiz and others stormed into a bank demanding her own money to help with her sister's cancer treatment. Sally got $13,000 (of her own money) and left the bank.” Last month, a 42-year-old food delivery driver held up to 10 people hostage during the seven-hour standoff in a desperate attempt to access his own money held at the bank. Yeah, everything’s going great! Banks are awesome. Capitalism rocks. Woo hoo!
Heads up, y’all — tomorrow, Saturday 9/17, is the Indian Larry Block Party and if you ain’t with it, better just leave it alone. Last year, my buddy Evan and I caught a show at the Wall of Death, which was one of the top 10 coolest things I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen aliens.
Love it, 5 stars