Dave LaChapelle life and biography

Dave LaChapelle is a photographer and director who works in the fields of fashion, advertising, and fine art photography, and is noted for his surreal, unique, sexualized, and often humorous style.

David LaChapelle was born in Simsbury, Connecticut and lived there until he was nine years old. He then he moved to North Carolina with his family, where they lived until he was fourteen, before moving back to Connecticut. He has said to have loved the public schools in Connecticut and thrived in their art program as a child and teenager, although he struggled with bullying growing up. He also attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and School of Visual Arts in New York City. His first photograph was of his mother, Helga LaChapelle, on a family vacation in Puerto Rico.

David LaChapelle's photography career began in the 1980's in New York City galleries. After attending the North Carolina School of Arts, he moved to New York where he enrolled at both the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts. With shows at 303 Gallery, Trabia McAffee and others, his work caught the eye of his hero Andy Warhol and the editors of Interview Magazine, who offered him his first professional photography job.

Working at Interview Magazine, LaChapelle quickly began photographing some of the most famous faces of the times. Before long, he was shooting for the top editorial publications of the world, and creating the most memorable advertising campaigns of a generation. His striking images have appeared on and in between the covers of magazines such as Italian Vogue, French Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Rolling Stone and i-D. In his twenty-year career in publishing, he has photographed personalities as diverse as Tupac Shakur, Madonna, Amanda Lepore, Eminem, Philip Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Pamela Anderson, Lil' Kim, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Paris Hilton, Jeff Koons, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, and Britney Spears, to name just a small selection.

After establishing himself as a fixture amongst contemporary photography, LaChapelle expanded his work to include direction of music videos, live theatrical events, and documentary film. His directing credits include music videos for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Moby, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, The Vines and No Doubt. His stage work includes Elton John's The Red Piano, the Caesar's Palace spectacular he designed and directed in 2004, which just recently ended its five year run in Las Vegas. His burgeoning interest in film led him to make the short documentary Krumped, an award-winner at Sundance from which he developed RIZE, the feature film acquired for worldwide distribution by Lion's Gate Films. The film was released in the US and internationally in the Summer of 2005 to huge critical acclaim, and was chosen to open the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

In 2009, exhibitions in Mexico City at the Museo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, in Paris at the Musee de La Monnaie, and in Guadalajara at the Museo de Las Artes broke attendance records. These shows presented his latest series of works with which LaChapelle has broken out of the frame, presenting three-dimensional sculptural murals. In 2010, LaChapelle mounted two record-breaking solo shows in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei as well as the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. His latest series of works employ the use of his own photography in collage format, deconstructing the image he has photographed, and constructing it into new collage works.

His ability to create scenes of extreme reality using rich and vibrant colors makes his work instantly recognizable and often imitated. He continues to be inspired by everything from art history and street culture, to the Hawaiian jungle in where he lives, creating both a record and mirror of all facets of popular culture today. He is quite simply the only photographic artist working in the world today whose work has transcended the fashion or celebrity magazine context it was made for, and has been enshrined by the notoriously discerning contemporary art intelligentsia.

Motion pictures
Krumped (2004)
Rize (2005)

Selected books:

David LaChapelle: al Forte Belvedere (Firenze: Giunti, 2008) - ISBN 9788809062320
David LaChapelle (Hamburg: Stern Gruner + Jahr AG & Co., 2008) - ISBN 9783570197721
David LaChapelle: the Rape of Africa (Amsterdam: Reflex, 2009) - ISBN 9789071848070

Awards:

2004:
13th Annual MVPA Awards - Winner "Director of the Year" - "Best Rock Video of the Year" for No Doubt "It's My Life"
Special Juried Prize Mountainfilm in Telluride
Special Juried Recognition in Sundance Film Festival
Winner of "Best documentary" in Aspen Film Festival

2006:
Presented with GLAAD's Vito Russo Award for outstanding contributions toward eliminating homophobia

Videography:

2005: Robbie Williams - Advertising Space
2006: Elton John - "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"
2007: Amy Winehouse - "Tears Dry on Their Own" ; Jennifer Lopez - "Do It Well"

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