La Chapelle gives birth

MANILA, Philippines – Each David LaChapelle photograph is a labor intensive unit all to itself. At the Hotel dela Monnaise gallery at Paris’ quai de Conti, David La Chapelle gave birth to his newest project — a multi-dimensional photo exhibit rife with pulsation and provocation that can only be signature La Chappelle.

Supreme

gives you a full page sneak peak into the man’s world via postcards snapped at the exhibit’s souvenir floor.

Looking at his work and the process involved to be able to do it, you realize it is not purely meant to shock and awe. Yes, he can. But he does more than just provoke. He pokes at your imagination and plays with interpretation. He loves to make classical references and juxtaposes present and postmodern tactics to be added in the visual equation. The result? Breathtaking images that have captivated fashion and art watchers through his colorful years and have made them interpret and re-interpret the meaning of their glossy lives.

The piece de resistance was a surreal three-dimensional installation of the fall of fashion’s commercialism, with a flooded Caesar’s Palace and multi-branded logomaniacs, now stripped naked and drowning in despair. Prophetic? A modern day Babylon? Alas, amid all the chaos, a dove is seen on the background, and you clearly see La Chapelle’s real point of view, still with a glimmer of hope.