LaChapelle And His Personal DJ
Originally published in The Prattler, Vol 72 #3, December 2002; Reprinted in Welcome to The Land of Cannibalistic Horses (Puberty Press, 2005)
David LaChapelle’s studio is on the second floor of some old, faded, graffiti-riddled warehouse. I make the stairs and enter without knocking. The studio is somehow exactly as I expected it: enormous, hard wood floors, rough, bare walls, Radiohead playing softly from some unseen stereo, a shrine for a recently deceased friend, random tables piled high with laptops and phones that won’t stop ringing, purple 2-D octopus tentacles, a light-up heart and knife tattoo, one analog high school clock, two life-size cheetah sculptures, and everyone is sitting around the table in the kitchen eating lunch.
Beautiful people, women and men, everyone’s so hip and casual, chatting it up. Everyone is real friendly and conversational but David is irritated because people keep asking him questions.
DAVID LACHAPELLE: It’s easier to like things than dislike them. It’s okay to like a lot of stuff. It’s okay to like different genres of art, different genres of photography, different genres of music. It just makes life a little more fun if you’re open-minded to different things. It doesn’t mean you have to be scattered or unfocused in your work. Andy Warhol just really liked everything. And I’m not trying to emulate him, I just find it’s an easier way to live. And it makes things much more interesting, much more fun. If you dislike a lot of stuff, you’re constantly editing everything. If you like a lot of stuff, it’s just easier.
I like originals, people who are trail-blazers, listening to their own thing, not following the pack. And they could be completely different from me. People are surprised when I like something different from my own style. Why? Because I don’t imitate it, that’s why you’re surprised? In American we’re taught that if we like soemthing you have to devour it. I can enjoy something and love it, doesn’t mean I have to be it.
AP: Your mom was a photographer?
DL: No, she just did snapshots, family portraits, but she turned them into big events, art directed our family portraits. She was living her fantasy through the photographs. She wanted us to look perfect, the perfect American family. We had special slothes we wore. We did pictures every weekend. We’d drive to places and pose in front of houses that weren’t ours, dogs that weren’t outs, cars that weren’t ours. She’d find scenic places to shoot. We’d go to country clubs we didn’t belong to. And we’d all be there posing in clothes we never wore, ya know, turtle necks, knee socks and little caps and have our hair combed. That wasn’t how we lived but that was her dream coming as a refugee to America from Lithuania during the war. She was living out her dream through snapshots.
AP: A wide-eyed youngster in the Lower East Side during the 70s hanging out with Warhol and such?
DL: I think it’s that whole era, the era you grow up in I think that’s the one that you’re most influenced by. I was influenced by that whole time ya know, pre-AIDS, things were just really crazy and spontaneous and people lived in the moment, people didn’t have any cares about tomorrow, it was all about that night, ya know, tonight.
“We didn’t get a cane, David, it didn’t arrive in the package.”
“Well, we need canes. The pimps need canes, go find some canes!”
AP: When did you know?
DL: I went to high school for art and I was painting and drawing before I went there. That was the first place I ever picked up a camera and so I never finished drawing after that. As soon as I started taking picturtes, I realized they were special and that I was on to something because all my high school friends were loving it, and ya know everyone was naked in the pictures and just doing this crazy stuff. I felt something right away. I felt that something good was happening right away.
When I was in high school, I was really free. I was doing what I wanted to do. And those pictures are so much like the pictures I’m doing now, it’s crazy. But then when I gout out of high school I put all this pressure on myself about trying to fit in and do what was gonna get me work and build a portfolio, and all this crazy shit instead of just doing what I wanted to do. And it wasn’t until I really just stopped thinking about that stuff and had the confidence to do it for myself was when I really changed.
AP: Growth?
DL: Well, God it’s changed me a lot. I mean, you know, you just go through different things. I had something to prove with color early on, when I first started doing color because everything was black and white, I really had a statement I wanted to make and now I really don’t have that anymore. My work has always been conceptual. The concepts have just gotten more mature and they’ve just changed as I’ve changed. I think what happened was I just got more confident. I’m just doing it for myself now.
“Whataya think, David?” Hands him a polaroid of the set for the next shoot.
“Good, good, good. But the arrows and the cocks need to be gold, you should know that.”
AP: What is celebrity?
DL: Celebrated. Celebrated person. The role that celebrities fulfill is to get our minds off the really serious issues of the day so we can focus on Winonna Ryder’s shoplifting. It takes our mind off the fact that we’re going to war and that the climate’s changing. We live vicariously thought celebrities. When they’re doing well, we’re happy for them. And when they’re doing well, we’re happy for them. And when they’re lives are a wreck, we feel like our lives aren’t so bad.
AP: Is that a good thing?
DL: It’s always been around, it’s gossip, that’s what it is. It’s just another form of entertainment.
AP: Like Warhol, can you create celebrities?
DL: I don’t know. The only person I feel that I’ve done that for is Amanda Lempore, ya know. And I think a lot of the photos I’ve done have added to someone’s career like Lil’ Kim and Pam Anderson. Smart celebrities realize that photographers are part of what they do.
AP: Are you a celebrity?
DL: No. Someone on a TV show half an hour a week is gonna be more famous than I am or Richard Avedon or Helmut Newton, Jennifer Anderson can’t walk down the mall of American without being mobbed. Whereas, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon and I can go skipping holding hands in the middle of that same mall and people won’t bat an eyelash. I chose not to be in front of the camera. I don’t do any press unless it’s related to photography. People always ask me to do these stupid things, like, ya know, be a judge for the Miss World contest, or do this or do that. And I won’t do anything that is not related to photography. My goal isn’t to be on “Hollywood Squares.” I’m not trying to be a B level or C level celebrity. I want to be an A level photographer and that’s it. I don’t want to be famous, I want to take famous photographs.
AP: Magazine cover vs. gallery show?
DL: I’ve always wanted to work for magazines. The hole gallery thing is something new and I like that too. But I made a conscious deciusions not to be an artist and to be a commnercial photographer. But there’s this big distinction in the world and you just can’t get around it Ya know, I feel like it’s pretentious to say, “Oh, I’m an artist.” It’s like, I’m a photographer and I love photography and I like working in magazines. I love the immediacy of it, I like the pace, I like the deadlines, I like the craziness of the lifestyle, I like flying around the world, I like the hecticness of it, the insanity of it, the sleepless nights. I’m hooded on that adrenaline, that rush that it provides. I didn’t want the art career because it’s a little to precious for me. ‘Cause I started showing galleries, the very first thing I did in New York in ’84 and I stopped.
“You want the models’ nails painted?”
“Yes. One black and one gold.”
“That’s gonna take some time.”
“Jesus, it’s getting late. We’re gonna be here so late.”
AP: Next shoot is copying a scene from Taxi Driver, copy imitation, reproduction, unoriginal?
DL: Taxi Driver isn’t a contemporary photographer working in a magazine today. Ya know what I mean? Taxi Driver is a film that is so famous and everyone knows it. What’ I’m doing is Taxi Driver if the movie had been like four hours long. I want to do other scenes, take those characters and do more scenes. Give you a taste of some of the pictures in the film and taking it a little further. Just because I love the film, it’s so iconic. It represents a time when I first got here when I weas a kid and I lived in this neighborhood. I don’t want to literally do Taxi Driver because that’s not exciting enough. I want to take those characters and if the film had been longer or there were outtakes, different scenes.
AP: Ever paid for sex?
DL: No, but I’ve been paid for sex. I was a male prostitute when I was like eighteen to save up for cameras and stuff. I used to make money doing it, I lived pretty well off it one season.
AP: Use any drugs? Prescription drugs?
DL: No, I don’t take pills. Well, I mean sometimes, if I get manic. I do, just to sleep really. Drugs are more of a block; they block you from thinking, they don’t give you inspiration or ideas. I think people take drugs to escape and not to think rather than to get ideas, to escape from pressure. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I mean, I was like a hustler so drugs were always around, my friends were drug addicts, my friends died of heroin overdoses. And I came back to this neighborhood when I was eighteen, and it was a fucking hell hole. I lived in a squat, had no electricity, no telephone, no lights, my best friend Berry died of a drug overdoes, shooting heroin, my best friend Brett who was a bike messenger, gave me my first bike in New York, he died of a heroin overdose and so did his brother and they were in their early twenties. I didn’t really do drugs. I tried everything when I was a kid but then I stopped and didn’t do any drugs for years and years and years and then about four or five years ago, I had so much pressure that I started just doing it to relieve pressure like getting fucked up one night, like going out to clubs and doing blow and getting drunk was like going on vacation, but the problem is… because you stop thinking, and you’re just out of it and you have to wake up in the morning and you try to function and you can’t. There’s just other ways to do it. I have much more fun going out to clubs when I don’t do drugs. Just dancing. Good music is the best drug, that’s why I have a DJ here, here’s my drug dealer. Seriously, I’m not kidding. I used to think blow was gonna give me energy for a shoot, but it just took away energy in the end and it just made me a wreck. And music, I could work until six in the morning with the right music and I’ll still be on point, ya know. And that’s true, I’m not trying to give you some schpeal. That work that the kids saw at Pratt, the 500 slides, the videos, if I was doing drugs none of that would have happened. How could I have gotten that work done if I was on drugs? It wouldn’t have happened. I’m an old guy, I couldn’t have done it. Getting fucked up just gets you nowhere, you can’t work and you can’t think. But I’m not anti-drug. Ya know, sometimes you get tense, sometimes you need something to chill you out, sometimes you need a drink, a glass of wine is a great thing, just fucking relax, you know.
“I put the beer in the fridge, Daivd.”
“Fine, just don’t drink it out of the can, put it in a cup. There’s just too many alcoholics around today. If my assistant sees that, we’re never get anything done. He’s a serious alcoholic, gets the shakes and shit.”
AP: Politics?
DL: Well, I think that there’s two ways, one is to read the newspapers everyday and watch CNN and to get yourself completely riled up about shit, but if you’re not gonna actually go and physically do anything about it, you’re wasting your brain, youre wasting your life. Just to be an observer of it and comment on it, I don’t thiink you’re getting anywhere. I stopped watching the news just because it was so full of shit, it’s so slanted. Wer’e being fed so much fear, it’s Bowling for Columbine. I read one news weekly, it’s called This Week, I highly recommend it.
I feel like I’ve already been through a war, growing up in the 80s in New York City with all of my friends dying of AIDS like everyone I knew. I’m having my second childhood right now, I’m having my twenties over again right now in my thiries and I just don’t want to get myself caught up in this fucking war, if I’m not going to go out and do anything about it, I’m not gonna just read about it.
AP: Responsibilities?
DL: The only responsibilities I have are my, ya know, your own personal responsibility to the people around you and stuff. I mean, charity starts at home. Ya know, it’s like go out and save the world and then come home and kick your cat. I try to be a better person to the people I work with and the people I’m friends with.
I wouldn’t use my talents to sell something I completely didn’t believe in, like fast food. You’d never see me doing a McDonald’s commercial, I don’t care if they paid me millions and millions of dollars. I’ve done car ads and I’ve done cigarette ads, my parents met working in tobacco, so I kinda feel like I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the tobacco industry.
AP: Good taste?
DL: There’s this whole virus going around in fashion photography, ya know they’re just too cool fro their own good. Don’t worry about being cool. Don’t worry about falling on your face, don’t worry about doing something cheesy, don’t worry about all that shit. Its just about taste. It’s all the Pottery Bard idea of like, ya know, white walls and drak wood floors, it’s like, yeah, we all have that now.
“David, we’re ready.”
“Great, turn up the music.”
