American photographer David LaChapelle has always been a pioneer of queer culture.

Cover photo: Diesel #MAKELOVENOTWALLS, campaign, by David LaChapelle (2017). Via It’s Nice That.

This article is part of my 30 Living Queer Artists Worth Celebrating in 2019 series. June is Pride Month, commemorating the international gay rights movement that began June 28th, 1969, with the Stonewall riots of New York. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the event. I’m celebrating all month long!

WARNING: The following article features and/or discusses AIDS, death, and nudity,

David LaChapelle

American artist David LaChapelle is known for his hyper-saturated — often explicit — photography. While critics have called his work too commercial, grotesque, and provocative, LaChapelle has always been at the forefront of pop culture, reflecting our fears and desires.

LaChapelle began his career in 1980s New York. At age 15, LaChappelle dropped out high school and left Connecticut. In NYC, he came of age during the devastating AIDS pandemic. He explains, “Everyone thinks the Eighties were so cool, but there was a big dark cloud hanging over that period. It was really like a war.”

LaChapelle lost his boyfriend, dancer Louis Albert, to AIDS. “I never got tested, and for 15 years I just assumed I was going to die,” LaChapelle recalls. He briefly worked for Act-Up, promoting condoms and safe-sex.

He took photos of his dying friends posed as angels. LaChapelle muses, “I think the ancients had it correct with that winged figure. I don’t think we’ve come up with a better depiction of what a soul might look like.”

At 17, LaChapelle met Andy Warhol who gave him a job at Interview Magazine. According to LaChapelle, Warhol’s only advice was this: “Do whatever you want and just make everyone look good.” LaChapelle proved himself capable and he quickly became one of the world’s most influential commercial photographers, working for Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Rolling Stone.

LaChapelle has had an enviable career, photographing some of America’s most recognizable celebrities, including queer icons like pop artist and mentor Andy Warhol, superstar singer Ricky Martin (who came out publicly in 2010), and painter Kehinde Wiley who would become the first known gay artist to paint a U.S. presidential portrait (President Barack Obama in 2018).

LaChapelle fired pop legend Madonna, after she yelled at him about her upcoming music video. In 2006, then at the peak of his career, LaChapelle quit commercial photography and moved to Maui, Hawaii. LaChapelle recalls, “I love glamour and fashion and beauty – that has been with civilisations for ever, but I needed to get away from the propaganda of that. When I quit everything, I never wanted to shoot another pop star as long as I lived, I was tortured by them.”

He returned to commercial photography in 2009, taking photos of Lady Gaga. Then, he re-entered the art world in 2011. “I went back to where I was twenty years ago, when I was working in galleries,” he says. Much of LaChapelle’s recent work has been influenced by his Hawaiian life.

“This last decade of work has really become a culmination of a new world paradise, which was inspired by living in a place that’s really pristine, this rainforest I live in. It’s a background for [exploring] the relationship between man and nature,” LaChapelle explains.

Inspiration & Contemporaries

Of course, LaChapelle draws heavy influence from his late mentor Andy Warhol. He even recreated Warhol’s iconic depiction of Marilyn with transgender model Amanda Lepore (a favorite of LaChapelle’s). Like Warhol, much of LaChapelle’s work can be described as pop and celebrity worship.

LaChapelle has also pulled references from art history, including French painter Théodore Géricault and Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo. “Michelangelo said the human body is proof that God exists,” proclaims LaChapelle. In a separate interview, he adds, “There is nothing wrong with our bodies and we have to stop teaching children that it’s shameful, that it’s only for sexual gratification.”

LaChapelle has much in common with French artist duo Pierre et Gilles. Like the pair, he is frequently cited as working in the pulp glamour aesthetic of James Bidgood, director of cult classic Pink Narcissus. Like the couple, LaChapelle explores celebrity and religion with unabashed fearlessness. LaChapelle also avoids Photoshop, choosing to build his intricate sets in real life.

Advertising Love

LaChapelle is perhaps best known for his 1995 collaboration with the Italian denim brand Diesel. Two male sailors kiss in front of a — diesel powered — American submarine, undoubtedly inspired by the 1945 V-J Day kiss in Times Square.

The ad was created shortly after the Clinton administration instated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy that banned openly LGBT+ people from serving in the U.S. military (President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act a year later). Kissing Sailors was also historic in that it was an international campaign, one of the first to portray a same-sex kiss in 72 countries around the globe.

LaChapelle recalls, “We didn’t do it to win awards or anything. At the time, what was being questioned was if openly gay people should be allowed to serve in the military, like it was a new thing. I just wanted to make a statement commemorating that gay people had been in the military since there ever was a military. Not only should we ‘allow them’ in, we should fucking thank them. That’s what Diesel did and allowed me to do.”

More than two decades later, LaChapelle was again invited by Diesel to create a political advertising campaign. This time, LaChapelle took aim at President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico. The 2017 #MAKELOVENOTWALLS campaign featured a diverse cast of models tearing down a wall while celebrating love, inclusion, and humanity.

“[A] wall that represents fear and oppression and separating people. A wall like they have in Palestine, like they had in Berlin, and now like what Trump wants to build on the border of Mexico. Whose side do you want to be on?” asks LaChapelle.

This campaign is necessary, explains LaChapelle, “Because it is more fun to love than hate. It is more fun to be inclusive.” The ads may appear as a cynical attempt to sell jeans, but LaChapelle argues, “If the government is what’s threatening us, then private sector companies like Diesel are what we’ve got, and otherwise we protest on the streets. If the government is corrupt, it can only come from the private sector.”

Advertising has the power to change opinions and LaChapelle believes even the fashion industry is obligated to join the dialogue. “I think every part of culture and society is a platform to discuss these subjects. It’s essential to retaining our human and civil rights. You can’t compartmentalize what we do and who we are.”

Indeed, LaChapelle has been a constant advocate for the queer community. He has daringly used his voice to make the world more inclusive through his work.

He asks, “[When] you’re an artist, you're allowed to make art, and you have all the things necessary to do that, the question becomes, ‘Well, what are you going to make?’ Are you going to add to the confusion and the noise and the darkness, or are you going to make something that can touch people and inspire them and move them?”