David Lachapelle, Fairfield, Connecticut 1963

The American photographer and video artist David LaChapelle is best known for his hyper-realistic, strikingly saturated celebrations of celebrity culture. Born in 1963 in Connecticut, LaChappelle attended high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts and embarked on a precociously successful career as a photographer. By the late 1980s he was showing his work in New York galleries where it caught the eye of Andy Warhol, who brought him to work at Interview Magazine. LaChapelle was soon shooting for major editorial publications, from Vogue and Vanity Fair to GQ and Rolling Stone, his editorial and advertising campaigns featuring many of the most recognizable faces on the planet, including Tupac Shakur, Madonna, Eminem, Andy Warhol, Philip Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Pamela Anderson, Lil’ Kim, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Jeff Koons, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Britney Spears, Amanda Lepore, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Jay Z, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and Angelina Jolie, to name but a few. LaChapelle also directed commercials and music videos, as well as theatrical stage productions, before turning from commercial to fine art photography in 2006. Witty and provocative, kinky and kitsch, LaChapelle’s work infuses a distinctively Pop aesthetic with the inspiration of art history, frequently evoking compositions and poses drawn from the Old Masters.