David LaChapelle finds God

By Laura Garmeson

Imagine a world where Kanye West is a black Jesus and Sergei Polunin, a Russian ballet dancer, resembles a Hindu deity. David LaChapelle, an American photographer, has spent the last three decades making sumptuous, surreal images which, with their frequent invocations of the divine, often elevate their subjects – from Hollywood actors and pop stars to the odd politician – into deities. Many of these images have been brought together in two glossy new compendiums of his work, “Lost + Found, Part I” and “Good News, Part II”, which chart the arc of his career.

He began taking photographs in the 1980s – ethereal Renaissance-inspired portraits of friends and models, which he exhibited in New York City – before landing a job as a photographer for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. He went on to shoot stories for Vogue and Rolling Stone in the 1990s and, in the 2000s, started directing music videos and shooting luxury advertisements. As his career progressed, he developed a distinctive style, full of glamour, decadence and fantasy, often designing baroque set-pieces and garlanding his celebrity sitters with religious symbols (LaChapelle is Catholic).