“His art is for everyone, not just for intellectuals,” mouths one of the talking heads in amongst the frantic flashes of eclectic imagery spliced together in the bright and bold film intro to one of this generation’s most talked about artists, David LaChapelle.

For more than two decades, LaChapelle has consistently captured the zeitgeist, producing countless artworks drenched in modern pop culture that altogether imbue important social commentary yet remain utterly accessible to all. From creating enthralling photo series, which exuberantly ignite the imagination to devising iconic music videos as well as his successful venture into film with Krumped (2004) and Rize (2005), LaChapelle has firmly cemented his famed position within the contemporary art scene and beyond.

His latest exhibition, entitled Earth Laughs In Flowers, sees the American visionary bring his latest collection to UK shores this month at Mayfair’s Robilant +Voena.  The series, which comprises of 10 large scale photographs, sees LaChapelle adopt the traditional Baroque still life painting style in order to explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity.

In line with the launch of his new exhibition in the UK, LaChapelle gave an intimate talk at the Dover Street gallery where he discussed the collection. Through delving into this series as well as his rich mix of past works- each prompted by various chapters in his life- LaChapelle proceeded to surface an intriguing insight into his colourful world.

“I never set out to be famous,” says LaChapelle. “Back then, all I wanted was to earn a living as a photographer, to one day eat a meal at Angelica’s.” Speaking of the vegetarian hotspot, LaChapelle harks back to a time laced in romanticism, one where his escape from narrow-minded Connecticut as a teenager brought him to the creative melting pot that was New York City. Lured by the trail of his artist heroes Mike Kelley and Jean-Michel Basquiat, LaChapelle descended on the city, a place where at that time it was not uncommon to stumble across the husky tones of Jeff Buckley performing in East Village Irish bar Sin-é or bump into Andy Warhol in the notorious Studio 54. “I’d the boyfriend at the time, Danny. We befriended this older women- I guess you could call her a cougar- who would bring us to Studio 54. We were her ticket into the club,” LaChapelle says with a smile.

It was at Studio 54 where LaChapelle struck up a friendship with Warhol, which in turn led him to acquire his first professional photography job at Warhol’s cult magazine, Interview. Soon after, LaChapelle earned a growing reputation for his imagery, whereby he would meticulously devise scenes and then alter the negatives to experimental success. 

Stood in the gallery at the day of the talk, LaChapelle gestures to three angelic images to his right, taken from his early portfolio. Shot in his self proclaimed “New York squat”, each image depicts the head and shoulders of a friend donning cherub-style wigs as light floods into the frame. In the darkroom, LaChapelle had later scratched bleach into the prints, thus accentuating the halo of the subject further. Life and death is common thread throughout LaChapelle’s work, something he would come to delve into further following the tragic loss of a boyfriend to AIDS at the height of its onslaught in the mid-eighties. “ There’s no better visual idea of the soul, than the angel,” expresses LaChapelle, clicking through his selections from his repertoire, which is littered with the religious iconography.

After the untimely death of his boyfriend, LaChapelle reached a crossroads in his life and left a tainted New York behind in favour of the thriving London scene. He planned on a two-week trip. Instead, he ended up staying a whole year. In the eyes of the London magazine world, LaChapelle work was refreshing, miles apart from the sharp and dark visuals that were infiltrating the market. Soon, his work became splashed across the pages of British Vogue and The Face as he rubbed shoulders with the likes of London’s colourful creatives Leigh Bowery and Trojan.

It was bustling scene that era, a time LaChapelle looks back on pivotal learning curve. As he clicks to an image he took of Andy Warhol, described as The Last Sitting (LaChapelle took that last ever professional image of Warhol before he died), he reminisces of the repercussions of the tumultuous fallout between Warhol and Basqiuat over their failed collaboration. “I learned a lot from that. I saw how the media could make your career then just as easily end it.”

LaChapelle’s work often sparked controversy in the media. With his Jesus is my Homeboy series which he shot for iD, LaChapelle describes the initial unease the magazine felt of his concept of shooting the figure of Jesus in modern day life featuring amongst regular down and outs in multiple unsavory locations. “I saw a t-shirt with the slogan of ‘Jesus Is My Homeboy’ and it got me thinking,” says LaChapelle of the series’ inception. “If Jesus were to come back today, who would he hang out with? The outcasts, that’s who!”

With LaChapelle’s work increasingly becoming deeply layered with subtext, he soon found it more and more difficult to remain within the confines of what is expected of a regular magazine editorial. His last fashion story, entitled The House At The End Of The World, was for Italian Vogue and was shot at Universal Studios, making use of the blown up houses remnant of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie, War of the Worlds. The editorial, which posed underlying questions about the infliction of climate change, by chance happened to run at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Naturally there was to be outrage, claims of insensitivity and demands to change his approach. But LaChapelle stood by his work and the message he intended to make. “One way to exercise fears, is through photography,” he says.

In 2006, LaChapelle decided he’d enough and opted out of the commercial photography stakes. At this stage he’d completed a trilogy of books, something he’d always hoped to achieve. “I’d become a workaholic,” admits LaChapelle. “My assistant who’d been with me for 11 months, said I never had single day off across this entire time. It was at this point that I felt I’d said what I had to say about popular culture and now I just needed to escape.” And he did just that, heading to lush shores of Maui where he intended to become a farmer.

However LaChapelle was later coaxed back into the art world by creative producer Fred Torres, who persuaded him to show at various galleries across the world as well as to delve into various special projects. LaChapelle was drawn to such endeavors and in recent years has seen the artist concoct works such as his From Darkness To Light photo installation series to The Americans, a provocative collection of 70’s family photos which LaChapelle manipulated in order to analyse ironically the American middle class and its own values.

With Earth Laughs in Flowers, LaChapelle once again epitomizes through this series his expert ability to conceive an idea in reality, with a careful composition of light revealing the scene in all its visual glory. “I much rather take the time to plan out the conception of an image,” says LaChapelle. “I really don’t like to sit, spending hours doing re-touching later.” For this collection, LaChapelle has carefully co-ordinated symbolic objects such as fruit, flowers and skulls- atypical items of traditional still life- and inserted them alongside modern day items such as mobile phones, balloons, troll dolls and a Starbucks cup. Combined in a disorderly yet expertly considered composition; the resulting effect achieves a painterly, almost sculptural quality, thereby challenging the traditions of painting.

Ending his lecture with one his iconic images of Whitney Houston, in a silent tribute to the late singer, LaChapelle solemnly shared to the gathering his ultimate goal for his work: “It is not my intention to create a sort of legacy. All I want is to give beautiful images to the world. I’d like to think of my work as music, that my photography touches you and stays with you, even after you have left the gallery.”

David LaChapelle, Earth Laughs In Flowers at Robilant +Voena, London W1S 4NL from now until March 24^th.  www.robilantvoena.com

Words By Aideen Shannon