LIV TYLER BY HELENA CHRISTENSEN

Fall/Winter 2013 | Eccentric...
E C C E N
T R I C
CHRISTENSEN
HELENA
BY
TYLER
US $13.50 | FR €8.00 | IT €8.00 | UK £7.00 | Display until January 31st
LIV
P H O T O G R A PH Y
Before the singularly eccentric pop conceptualist was chronicling the stars of the
noughties and aughties on the covers of Vogue and Vanity Fair, a young 21-year-old
David LaChapelle was shooting friends and strangers found on the streets
of New York and showing his photographs in upstart galleries downtown. Here
we’ve collected a selection of these early works from the 1980s and made them
glossy for the first time.
unpublished.
Words Kevin McGarry
Photography David LaChapelle
Thanks to Reynaldo Davis Carter
& Fred Torres Collaborations
It’s impossible to think of fashion and celebrity portraiture today
without thinking of the provocative and often-polarizing work of
David LaChapelle — the stagey, high-voltage bleached and tinted
erotics, the religious overtones, a hybrid of cartoon and confessional
— even if in the past half-decade he has withdrawn from magazines
to focus on making art, with five solo museum exhibitions in the last
year alone. And not everyone knows that art is where LaChapelle
got his start, when as a 17-year-old high school dropout he enrolled
at the North Carolina School of the Arts, finished his secondary
education and high-tailed it to Manhattan. “When I came to New York,
I knew I had to make my own kind of work,” he remembers “and these
images you see here represent the very beginnings of that. These were
analog photographs enhanced by manipulating negatives and hours
spent printing in the dark room. I refer to this time as the dark ages of
my life: I was either in a nightclub, in the dark room or shooting.”
In 1984, LaChapelle was 21 and the city was a gritty, open field for
opportunity. He met Lisa Spellman as an aspiring gallerist (30 years
later, she is a venerable Chelsea institution) and they put on a show
of his black and white photographs titled Good News for Modern
Man as the inaugural exhibition at her gallery's eponymous first
home in her loft at 303 Park Avenue South. “We didn’t know that you
had to wait a year before you had another show” — so they didn’t: five
months later, 303 Gallery presented another series by LaChapelle
called Angels, Saints and Martyrs.
After a stint in London, LaChapelle returned to New York and in
1988 did a show of color photographs called Your Needs Met at 56
Bleecker Gallery. “There’s a lot of sincerity and intention going into
these pictures, there’s nothing ironic about them. When I was making
them I never had any aspirations to be rich or famous or anything.
I just wanted to share these pictures with people and touch them, I
wanted to share images that I loved.”
By the end of that decade he was reaching people alright, working
on an increasingly ambitious scale and creating some of the iconic
images whose stylistic roots can be traced throughout these pages.
“The 80s were the best of times and the worst of times. So much
creative energy going on in the East Village, so much happening —
gallery shows, music, dancing, clubs — all under this cloud of AIDS,
watching young friends die, not knowing if I would be next. Yet,
there was so much camaraderie among artists, causing explosions
of artistic expression — all concentrated in one neighborhood, in one
time. It informed everything I believe today and made me who I am.”
Angels Saint and Martyrs IV (1984) — “Here depicted is the process of Transfiguration;
that is, when light eclipses the dark within all of us. Radiant light emanates and darkness is expelled.”
58 | Vs.
Following, LaChapelle describes, in his own words, the inspiration
behind these unpublished early images from Good News for Modern
Man, Angels, Saints and Martyrs and Your Needs Met.
SILENCE (1987)
“‘A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that
never sing, but die with all their music in them!’ Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote this in his poem
‘The Voiceless’ in 1858. I felt a resonance when so many young friends started dying of AIDS.”
60 | Vs.
SPIRITUAL POEMS (1989)
ANGELS, SAINTS AND MARTYRS II (1984)
“This one represents a longing to understand our purpose.”
“This is a study of the Pietà. I have photographed many different versions of the Pietà, yet this one with a simple open
hand of Mary, seems to ask, ‘Why?’ For me the Pietà is the symbol of ultimate loss: a mother’s loss of her child.”
61 | Vs.
62 | Vs.
SONG (1989)
LOVE UNDERSTOOD (1989)
“I was inspired by nothing more than the desire to express one’s self and the attempt to make music visual.
I used photographic dyes, tiny brushes and a magnifying glass to hand-paint 35mm negatives, enhancing the
colors to achieve the intensity I wanted.”
“I don’t understand the focus on sexuality, one of life’s most beautiful gifts, turned into this act with so many ideas of
‘sin’ attached to it. The three snakes represent guilt, shame, and judgment. I believe the ultimate expression of love is
intense human connection in any form.”
63 | Vs.
64 | Vs.
GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN MAN III (1984)
the birth of adam (1984)
“In this work from my very first gallery show, light being received by arms raised upward represents
a moment of divine truth. Enlightenment, however brief, is here depicted. I used bleach on black and
white images to create the halos.”
“Adam was actually the name of the model, a modern dancer I was in love with — I never told him that.
He wore glasses and dressed a little nerdy, but when he removed his clothes it was like Michelangelo’s
‘Dying Slave’ came to life. I hear he’s married now to a really nice guy.”
65 | Vs.