David LaChapelle Quotes
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I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.
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I'll let criticism spoil breakfast, but I don't let it affect my lunch.
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In the fashion world, I was always an outsider, but I made people look good, so I had a career.
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I like the consistency of having people in my life for a long time.
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There's nothing that symbolizes loss or grief more than a mother losing a child.
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If you watch Michael Jackson [1992] concerts from Budapest and compare it to a Madonna concert of today, you'll see such uplifting beauty and a message that you won't see in any other artist of our time.
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I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.
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What's shocking is cruelty and torture, and that's become our entertainment. Kids can play violent video games, but God forbid they look at a naked woman. That's pornography, that's perverse. No!
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I wanted it to provide an escape route, I wanted to make pictures that were fantastic and took you into another world, one that was brighter. I started off with this idea.
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You work with people who are obsessive about shopping, obsessive about owning things and buying things, like this purchase is going to make them happy. And you want to say to them, You know, no amount of real estate is gonna fill that void.
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I never want people to be repulsed with my pictures; I always want to attract people.
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I shoot fantasy. If you want reality, ride the bus
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Then I got this idea in my head that magazines were like a gallery and if you got your magazine page ripped out and someone stuck it on their refrigerator, then that was a museum – someone’s private museum.
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For me, it's easier to like more things than to dislike them; I'm not a critic in that sense. I find it easier to like more, to be more open and enjoy more things, which has given me more opportunities.
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My work is about making candy for the eyes. It's about grabbing your attention.
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I think we're in a post-pornographic time and nothing seems shocking, but everything remains carnal no matter what you do.
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If you want reality take the bus.
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My work is about making candy for the eyes. It's about grabbing your attention. Even though my work is appearing in magazines I am trying to make a large picture. I want my photographs to read like a poster.
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The matriarchal society 1300 years ago in Egypt was a peaceful society; that's where you had no war for thousands of years! When they switched to patriarchal society, when the male energy ruled, we became obsessed with the greed. Now we are in this time of intense greed!
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You can't change people's minds, we are not God. We can do our best to do what we do, whatever job we have to bring sort of goodness out there. But we can't change people. As an artist what I can do is to communicate!
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You just do what you love, and then a style happens later on.
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There is nothing ugly in sexuality or in the body. It's human!
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I went to art high school and thought I'd be a painter. Unfortunately I didn't finish high school, but that's always been part of my work.
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People will get tired of overly retouched images soon and they'll want something different. If people have too much reality, they want fantasy. What matters most is what the image communicates. I remember the first roll of film I shot at high school, the contact sheet went from these really worthy images of cracks in the wall and ended up with all of my dancer friends naked in Renaissance poses.
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There are going to be people doing the talking and people who get talked about, choose, which one do you want to be?
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I love when people write about something, I learn what I'm doing through the eyes of a good critic, positive or negative. It's still a learning experience.
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The minute you point a camera at something, you are manipulating the image, because you are cropping out whatever is to the left and right of it. The minute you put a light on someone, you are manipulating the image.
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The industrial revolution fueled all of humanity, everything we do has been exploding ever since. It's been the biggest most impacting thing, not only for human beings in the last 250 million years, but also the planet, which caused the ice age, which buried the forest. It's this circle because of the industrial revolution, it's neither good or bad, it enabled all of modernization, extended our life, it changed everything. It's the most impactful thing that happened to the planet and the people.
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Michael [Jackson] had paintings of himself at Neverland depicting himself as a knight and surrounded by cherubs and angels. People might think he's an egomaniac, but he's not. It's because the world turned against him.
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We're bombarded with images. Take the time to stop and look at something then connect with them and maybe they're thinking the same thing, I used a lot of devices to catch the eye of people who have seen a lot of stuff, having worked in advertising and in editorial. I have learned to get someone to stop and look at something, that language.
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