Lecture by David LaChapelle at OstLicht gallery, Vienna, June 2nd, 2014

Legendary photographer David LaChapelle talked about the three exciting decades of his career path at an unique evening lecture. Starting from the early 1980s art scene in New York, the journey continued through the colourful 90s when art and fashion magazines became LaChapelle's 'galleries' and ended with the reflections upon his most recent art series presented currently at his solo exhibition DAVID LACHAPELLE. ONCE IN THE GARDEN at OstLicht. 

www.ostlicht.at

Thank you for coming to the gallery, all your support.

This has been a really special trip for me.

And The life ball, the whole experience of being in Vienna, starting with the poster.

We should probably start with the poster.

I think that's what's on everyone's mind.

How many went to the Life Ball in the room?

Well, it was really incredible that this city has such an event, you know, and I was such an honor to be a part of it.

I didn't really know what all it was about.

I saw some films, you know, and over the years my friends, Amanda Lepore especially, would tell me, all my life bought, a friend of mine who's a hairdresser comes over here, tell me how incredible.

I usually kind of stay away from like big crowds, concerts and things.

Like we have a festival in America, Burning Man, and I never go because it's just too intense, like the crowds and everything.

I like to be alone and kind of, but this was really magical and it was something completely unexpected.

And I think that people living in Berlin, I mean, I'm sorry, living in Vienna, in Austria, you should really be very proud to have this.

As I was telling journalists earlier, it's like Rio de Janeiro, except in Europe, you know, and it's to relieve suffering in the world.

So all this costume and pageantry and celebration of life, which is really beautiful.

I only understood it when I came, you know, and really God really touched me and moved me.

And before I came I was excited about taking the photograph, because I already wanted to do this series of the goddess, of the female and the male energy.

I wanted to do a female in the male energy, the goddess, the new goddess.

And this was on my mind after having met a girl named Yasmin Petty, who's the 1 with black hair.

My friend Amanda Lepore, who's a transgendered woman, introduced me to her.

And I came to this club in New York, and I was like, oh my God, she's like incredible.

And then I met Carmen, and I talked to both of them.

And Carmen was very comfortable with the idea of having her penis in the photograph, as long as it looked beautiful, she said.

She goes, but I want my penis to look beautiful, too.

I said, you know, everything, you know, that's my goal, is not to make anything ugly.

So then when the Life Ball called, I said, Gary, I got really excited and I just blurted it out.

I mean, you know, penis is so clinical and cock is kind of crude, so I just said a woman with a penis, you know, her beautiful breasts, but the female is more dominant.

So the matriarchal societies of all history have been the peaceful ones.

It's not until we switch to the patriarchal societies.

The patriarchal societies, does that sound better or worse?

So the patriarchal societies were more peaceful, more about art and creativity, and the patriarchal societies were much more about war and aggression and greed.

And we're in a patriarchal Society for many, many thousands of years now.

And the idea of the female and the male together in 1 figure, to me, is a very beautiful idea.

It's a containment of the male and female energies in 1 body, and beautiful.

And in the Renaissance figure Botticelli, yet when I talked to Gary, he said the theme was in the garden.

So I shot in my backyard in Los Angeles, and in the garden, he was inspired by the Eronemus Bosch painting.

So that's why we cut this with cardboard and painted it, it's in my living room now.

But it's this direct quote of Eronymous Bosch.

And I said, well that's the embryonic sac, or the chrysalis.

Some people said it looked like an eyeball.

I didn't want it to look like an eyeball, but I wanted it to look like the embryo, the chrysalis, or the cocoon of the butterfly.

So it's the rebirth, the reincarnation, the transformation.

We put the smoke machine on and right when we were taking the picture, suddenly the sun came out and the light came through the trees.

And it was incredible because I wanted these beams of light.

And in Los Angeles we have this haze all morning and around 1 o'clock it burns off.

And it just started burning off and we just got it all together and these rays of light came through.

So actually when you see in the catalog the making of photographs, What you see here was there.

And Carmen had the idea to also photograph her as a woman.

So we tucked her penis between her legs, and then I did another picture, and then I just took away the penis and Photoshopped that, and then that was the only part that was Photoshopped, and that was really because Carmen wanted to have both images, and then the light bulb with the tag Adam and Eve.

For me this was the ultimate photograph, the male and the female.

This was the 1 that meant, this was the 1 for me and I didn't see anything shocking about it.

I thought it was just absolutely beautiful.

I just really thought, okay, we have mermaids, which is half a woman and half a fish, which if you think about it, is kind of crossing species, which is a little more scarier than just crossing genders.

So the mermaid or the centaur, the half man, half horse, you're really gonna be removed.

Seriously, if you're gonna fall asleep, like I can't even look at you.

This is my friend, I can talk to him this way.

No seriously, give someone a seat, he needs to sit down, and you go take a nap.

But I can't, if you're sleeping in front of me, I'm gonna get like totally distracted.

Sorry, he's gonna come sit over here, And if he falls asleep, I don't have to look at him.

He disappeared in the life ball and I haven't seen him for 2 days.

And then he comes back, he shows back up.

Now, we've seen these images in Disney films, we've seen them in sculptures, we've seen them in the history of art, and they're beautiful.

But if we've never seen it, and someone said, I'm going to make a half woman, half fish, you'd be like, oh, that idea sounds really scary.

But we know because of the fairy tales and mythologies, it's beautiful.

I'm thinking, oh, this is a mythological figure.

And today, in the world, we can actually have the technology with medicine to create whatever we want.

And if we want to live with a penis and have breasts and be a woman and live as a woman or have the full operation and have, as a man of Laporte says, a fully functional vagina, We can have that too.

We can have whatever we want, you know, and we're all built differently, but nobody goes through this operation or goes through this transformation for kicks.

It's because they're matching what they feel inside, they want to match to the outside.

And we all have to accept what our personal choices are.

To me, obscenity or pornography is violence and cruelty, murder.

The movies, we're watching murder, or watching serial killer documentaries over and over and over.

And we're watching the Hunger Games, which are kids killing kids.

And this is like, oh, wow, this is entertainment.

Yay, kids killing kids and who's going to die and this is our entertainment.

And you think about next time you look through, in America we have this thing called Netflix, you know.

Look through all the films available, all the television shows, Dexter, I don't know if you get all the American shit that they make in Hollywood, but if you get that all here, it's, I'd say maybe 75, 80% horror.

You have the Saw movies, torture porn, that's the real evil.

That's the real darkness, not the human body.

The people in the room know this, I think.

You know, and then when I did this image, I saw that I was working in LA.

I had just come from Maui, and I was doing a film, a short film, and someone showed me from the internet this, oh, Oma was spray painting on top and I laughed.

I thought, oh my God, like, she's having fun.

I'm thinking, God, That's degenerate art and saying it's pornography.

But because LifeVault put the image on the streets, And that's what I wanted them to do.

I hope because I wanted people to see it.

But transgenders have been kept down and the most oppressed minority in the world.

I've been friends with so many of them since I was a kid.

And a lot of them have to work so hard to become a woman.

Some of them are obvious, some less obvious.

They all have different lives, but many have to resort to prostitution, and it's like this dirty little secret, and men will go to them because it's like a kinky thrill for them and they leave them and just, it's a life that I've witnessed for many years, you know?

And even in the gay community they have been ostracized and kept down.

They used to be made to march in the back end of the gay pride parade in New York City.

So these people go through this torment as a child.

They want to be in a dress, their parents are putting them in pants, you know, this conflict.

I mean, I can imagine because I did everything I wanted in life, you know, I really, I live my life as so, If I wanted this, you'd be looking at a woman right now, you know?

I mean, and I probably wouldn't make a very pretty 1, you know?

And there's such a misconception in the straight community about transgender people.

I remember my mother is very ill right now, she has this nurse from the Caribbean, and the nurse was saying to me, I told her I was gay, she said, you want to be a woman?

You know, she's Jamaican, and I said, If I wanted to be a woman, you'd see the biggest titties right now in your face that you ever saw.

Because it's a hard road that these people go through, and it's not done for some kick.

So for many reasons, I felt this image was important.

But most of all, I just thought it was beautiful.

I felt that the world was ready, I felt it's time for this new goddess, this new mythology, the male and female energy, but the female energy is dominant.

And I felt it was beautiful and something that I wanted to celebrate and make as beautiful as possible.

So she's sort of the boy's on the floor, but he's not even fully formed, you know, it's sort of the idea of a boy.

He is not fully, his brain is not even formed, he's still kind of in the embryonic sack, or the cocoon of the butterfly, and she's already blossomed.

And anyway, in my backyard, so when I came to here, and then I found out, you know, on the plane, I'm reading more and more, I got really scared, like, holy shit, this FPU, like, are they going to hurt me?

So the life ball was really cool like they had bodyguards.

And I get here and it's like so incredible and everybody's so happy and I don't know if it's because I'm in this like art world life ball bubble, But this is an amazing, amazing experience.

And I'm like, oh my God, these people are crazy.

And they're all giving the money to this, to help suffering in a country in Africa far away in the Caribbean, and then they see President Clinton there, and your president, and I'm thinking, wow, and it's really got these powerful people behind it.

But then we had the dinner, the dinner where Clinton was, and had the auction, and I'm thinking, oh God, no one's gonna buy the picture.

I'm sitting there and they're auctioning different items, jewelry and purses and different things.

And then I know the picture's coming up, I'm worried.

I would be embarrassed, I want them, I thought, to make money.

And the only reason I'm talking about this is because to some people, money equals value.

Like, if it has a value of price tag, then it means something.

So Maybe the people from the FPU, when they hear that it went for 180, 000 euros, the estimate was 30.

And Gary went up and said, I want to buy for 100.

And then someone said 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 150 over here, 150, 150, 160, 170, 170, 180, sold 180!

And it's like, oh my god, 180, 000 euros.

And I was like thinking, all this money's going to go to Africa, you know?

You know, I felt this couple from Monaco bought it, this married couple.

And you know, at first, I was a little nervous.

And then I said, I have to overcome this nervousness and buy this piece because I love it.

But the more I looked at it, the more I understood.

And I was so happy that it was going to a home where children would be there.

And it wouldn't be this obscene, hidden thing, you know.

And they were so sweet and it was so generous.

But to some people, they only understand money.

So I hope they hear that it was sold and I hope they know that the money is not going to go into someone's pocket, but it's actually going to go help alleviate suffering.

It's going to really confuse them even more.

Anyway, so if anybody has any questions during the lecture, just stop me, because I can talk forever.

So yeah, it was a real emotional experience, you know, highs and just going from being afraid and seeing it being sold and going through this great cause and feeling like, okay, good, like all the trouble the lifeboat went through being sued, you know, they were going to sue them.

So I felt very happy and it was very emotional.

I guess we'll just go through the slides.

I was working for magazines and I stopped working in 2006 and then moved to Maui.

This was the last picture I did for fashion magazine for Italian Vogue and it was on the newsstand when Katrina happened and it was a spell.

Because I visited my mom in Florida and she was with my sister putting the storm shutters up.

And I had to get a plane, and I felt so helpless.

I was leaving to go on a plane, and they're putting up the storm shutters.

And of course, global warming is on my mind, this climate change.

And I'm just becoming really conscious of this time, during this time, which 2005, 2006, was really heavy on my mind.

And there was hurricanes coming through Florida that year.

My Mother lived right in the middle of the hurricane alley, they call it.

So when I did the fashion story for Ty and Vogue, I did these pictures and thinking of this, you know?

And then we shot it in June, it was on the stands in August, and Katrina happened to hit New Orleans the time, exact time that this was on the newsstand, and people were upset and they thought that it was about Katrina.

And the magazine called me and said, she was Italian, David, is this about the, they think it's about Katrina.

And you can please, why you make a picture hurricane?

It is about, I didn't know about Katrina.

How could I possibly know what's gonna happen in the future?

And then I knew For a long time I had this feeling I have to stop, you know, magazines.

And I always wanted to live in the woods and be a farmer.

I always wanted to, you know, I had this fantasy since I was a kid.

I used to pray to have a cabin in the woods someday.

It was falling to pieces, but it was the land.

I was starting this farm, taking the nudist colony, turning it into a sustainable farm.

And I'm living in a little cabin, there's 4 cabins, and the house, and my friends, we're all working to build this thing.

And now it's 8 years later, and we have goats and chickens, and we're growing every vegetable.

I'm a vegetarian my whole life, but the fruit, the avocados, we've planted so many trees.

And I'm there and I'm thinking, okay, I'm a farmer now, it's 6 months, and it was a rainy season, it's the middle of the rainforest, it's raining every day, and I get a call.

I said goodbye to the world of magazines and fashion and celebrity.

I said, you know, it's time for the young kid who's excited.

Just in my heart I felt, okay, it's enough.

Like, the struggle was like too much to work with the pop stars.

Have you ever been in a relationship where suddenly you just look at the person and you're like, oh my God, I don't love you anymore.

Like, it was great while it lasted, but I gotta go.

Where you had a really great love affair, and then it was like, okay, now it's over.

1 day you woke up, you're just like, it's done.

And it was beautiful while it lasted, but I really have to go.

It was just a love affair that ended, yeah?

So I was in love with fashion and then I fell out of love very quickly.

And they called, you know, this miracle happened.

This gallery called from Germany, from Berlin, Rafael Blanca, he said, would you do a show?

I said, well, I'd love to, but I don't shoot celebrities or fashion anymore.

I got really excited, because I did want to take photos.

But I just didn't think that I could, you know.

The fashion, the celebrity thing was done, and I walked away.

I just walked away and I started a new life.

So when he called, my dream as a little boy was to show in galleries.

I did this scene that it was the Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel.

I was aware of it, but I didn't know the whole history.

As I made the picture, I drew it out, I painted it, I was thinking about it for so many months.

And then I started reading about Michelangelo.

It's the biblical flood, yet it's the flood of Noah.

It's also the future flood, you know, the flood we fear, the things we've been told in all the documentaries and all the consciousness that we know that the oceans are rising and the ice is melting and we know this change is coming, it's already happening.

But it's not, to me, you know, everyone's helping each other, they're caring each other, they're reaching for their brother, they're, you know, There's beauty because they're not fighting.

They know the end is coming, but it's the best of humanity.

So when people say, it's so apocalyptic, it's so apocalyptic.

It's, you know, it's people helping each other, you know, even though they know they're going to die.

They're still like this, they're helping each other.

They're reaching to give each other a lift, you know?

So to me, it's still this beautiful moment.

Working with the nude, working with the figures, something that I love, I think it's, I really believe what Michelangelo said, that the beauty of man is the proof that God exists.

So this was the first piece and then I was back in galleries.

I came in this full circle and oh my god, it was after 20 years of working for magazines, I was back in galleries.

I thought once you left, you couldn't go back.

And I developed a language of visually speaking.

I love to have the picture do the talking, you know, so I don't have to explain it.

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Lecture David LaChapelle