David La Chappelle
David La Chappelle is a US based photographer who mostly photographs celebrity portraits. His images always catch my eye and draw me into the meaning of the photograph. I admire David La Chapelle because of his outrageous conceptual development to his photographs aswell as his use of colour, shape and flawless lighting. His images can be a little crude at times (like this one of Drew Barrymore) but that is part of his style.. he sort of pushes the boundaries of what should be acceptable. I think his images are successful because they gain a reaction from the viewer.
You can view more of his stuff at http://www.davidlachappelle.com
- Nicole
posted by Nicole at 10:37 am
2 Comments:
I think I don't like La Chappelle's images for the wrong reason. I see his photos as portraits where everything in the portrait is about him, not the sitter. This bugs me. But perhaps he never meant them to be portraits? The problem is I can't work out what they are if not portraits.
i think nicholas' comment is true about the photograph being about him but that is true about every photographer and subsequent photograph ever made. it is not specific to him. A photograph is always going to say more about the photographer than anything else as everything in it is coloured by the photographers manipulation of that scene, it just depends as a viewer how much information u bring to looking at that work to how aware you are of the photographers effect on it.
i think its simply about expression and this is his expression of these people and they are coloured with every experience and piece of knowledge he has accrued just as when one looks at them as a viewer, what you see is coloured by every experience and piece of knowledge that you have gathered.
i really like his work - often its not my favorite but i have a great deal of respect for him as a photographer, the way he goes for it, his concepts are very interesting and well realised and his work is very ballsy . i watched a doco on him and two things he said resonated with me. One was that he thought his work was more truthful then alot of other peoples because at least he didnt pretend that his photographs were reality - his are blatantly fictious while others masquerade as reality-and second was that he didnt think in doing portraits you necessarily have to have the sitter staring into the camera revealing their soul through their eyes that you could also say a lot about someone by how far they are willing to go and what they are willing to do, both are things i find to be very true.
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