Project 1

Representation of Reality

Every photograph that is made whether by one who considers himself a professional or by the tourist who points his snapshot camera and pushes a button is a response to the exterior world, to something perceived outside himself by the person who operates the camera.
Elliot Porter

Reality...What A Concept!
Robin Williams

These two quotes kept running through my mind as I was considering what to do project one on. The very idea of perception of reality strikes as extremely postmodern. How history is written depends on when it is written and from what viewpoint. The concept of religion, regarding what a particular denomination is, is a result of layers of change and built on realities.

The medium to choose, for me, was easy; photography. While the work illustrated in this example is not mine, it seemed, to me, one of the most pronounced examples of representation. Some fellow students have already started research on photographers, such as Jerry Uelsmann, who have manipulated reality for quite some time. I often wonder what Uelsmann originally thought of digital. Did he see it as remediation? Was it something that became a tool that made his job easier or was it initially received as something only sissies played with as many photographers initially shunned automatic exposure cameras and autofocus cameras as they first arrived on the scene. It also tickles me to hear people who decry digital photography talk about the true reality shown in images by photographers such as Ansel Adams. Adams was the master of pre-visualizing the end result and then accomplishing his goal via manipulation of the camera, the film, and finally the print.

As we read and talked about surrealism in our class, one photographer I had encountered in an American Photo article a few years ago came most to mind; David LaChapelle. http://www.davidlachapelle.com/ The proposal I made regarding this project was to examine LaChapelle's representation of reality. His style has been described by Richard Avedon as surreal. When I presented this idea to James, he compared him to Helmut Newton. Interestingly enough, I found this quote from Helmut Newton regarding LaChapelle:

Helmut is not very impressed by current photography. "There's a lot of
pornographic pictures taken by the young today" he said. "There's a magazine,
Purple." He frowned. "A lot of nudity is just gratuitous. But someone who makes
me laugh is David LaChapelle. I think he's very bright, very funny and good. Helmut Newton," The New York Times

While not saying he is, the photographer himself describes his work in surreal terms.

"My pictures are escapist," David LaChapelle told American Photo in 2001. "For me, pictures are fantasies. At the same time, they're a document of our time."

One image that certainly describes this is one he did of Paul Reubens, AKA Pee Wee Herman;

While a busboy at Studio 54 he was given a break by Andy Warhol at Warhol's Interview Magazine. LaChapelle is extremely creative in his approach to photography. In addition to photography he has done music videos and has even been a stage director. What I will concentrate in this project will be his representation with regard to advertising and people photography.

Every artist, whether visual or performing, seems to search for what could best be called their shtick. This is what separates them from all the others and makes them unique. In a Designboom interview http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/lachapelle.html, LaChapelle is described as follows:

david lachapelle is a photographer who tends to create his own visionary world,rather than reproduce what's visible in the world, a photography stylbe compared becompared to no one. david lachapelle has evolved his photography into an idiosyncratic and highly personal combination of reportage and surrealism.

As LaChapelle puts it, his celebrity photos represent those, who make up our time. http://www.culturekiosque.com/nouveau/books/rhebooks3.html We see photos of the likes of TV and screen stars Pamela Anderson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jude Law, to music stars Christina Aguilera, P Diddy, Fleetwood Mac and the Beastie Boys. Also included are those one might not expect, from Mohammad Ali to Hillary Clinton to his old boss Andy Warhol. LaChappelle makes a social commentary regarding who is who, through whom he chooses to photograph. Ironically, some of his photos have come to represent who the celebrity is perceived as, as people connect with that celebrity via the LaChapelle image. Unlike Annie Leibovitz, who strived for an understanding of a subject to give it a natural look, LaChapelle's never look natural. The colorfulness of the 70's he grew up in certainly has affected his work. http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/10/13/lachapelle/

One shot he did of Mira Sorvino, he morphed her image, photographed for an Allure magazine spread, into a simulacrum of Joan Crawford (adding period clothing, makeup and a young Christina stand-in.) The dust-up prompted yet another media debate over the "reality" of photography and caused LaChapelle to hire a publicist to counter what he considered cheap shots, which began appearing in the New York tabloids. "It was all very Joan Crawford,"


There's no doubt much of LaChapelle's work represents sexuality. One graphic display is his representation of the sexuality of Las Vegas in a store display. According to a blogger from http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/05/on_david_lachapelle_selfridges_and_a_vegas_supernova.shtml , his representation of breasts, a bit of a departure from photography, are certainly photographable. They sometimes inflate and deflate.

While many of LaChappelle's sexually oriented images deal with nude females, he is not averse to nude males as well. His work shows all people in an equal light. We see in his subjects, straight or gay, men or women, and all colors. A self professed gay, he says by being gay, he sees the world as an outsider allowing him to escape in his mind and be more creative. Many of his sexual works have a touch of humor or silliness in them always bringing in some sort of prop. On one photo shoot, he felt a man's buttocks needed some flowers in it. His work seems to say have fun.

Advertising photography has generally been considered a barometer of a society's collective psyche. LaChapelle's clients include; L'Oreal, Iceberg, MTV, Ecko, Diesel Jeans, Sirius, Ford, Sky Vodka and the Got Milk campaign. LaChapelle, in the tradition of Richard Avedon, Represents the product being sold, not in what it is, but what the purchaser becomes when they use it. Many of the images do not even show the product itself, but the logo and a person engaged in something from beating on a conga drum for Kahlua to a man and a woman dancing to music from a boom box in an empty room for Phillip Morris.

In the advertising world, you are somewhat at the mercy of what the company hiring via the art director. LaChapelle does come away with more ability to be creative than most. Then again, a corporation would have to expect and desire you would give some input. I suppose you wouldn't expect Pepsi or Sprite to allow a shot such as this:


"My work is about finding beauty in the banal and making the ordinary extraordinary," LaChapelle says. "I want to enlarge the idea of reality and help people feel that anything's possible."

David LaChapelle does seem to have blurred the line between portrait, fashion, and advertising photography, and art. He seems to go where few men have gone before him. He does tap into the mood of the time and show, as he says, his dreams in his photography. Oddly enough, when asked if he is a surrealist, he denies it. When asked if he is a satirist, he prefers to think of himself as a documentarian. Hmm, what about this advertising shot for "Got Milk?"as a documentarian, David?


If you're looking for a representation of that which is politically correct, don't look to the work of David LaChapelle.

"good taste is the death of art,"
Truman Capote