15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Challenging, evocative, disturbing, georgeous, Jun 26 2010
By C. Reynolds - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: David LaChapelle: Heaven To Hell (Hardcover)
The photographs in this book almost seem like slick fashion images until something in them catches you by surprise. Courtney love in the figure of the Pieta holding the (lookalike) corpse of Kurt Cobain. With a child playing at her feet. A row of men wearing boy scout sashes sitting on a log grinning, and at their feet the passed out body of a man with his pants down, a shotgun in his hand, surrounded by beer cans. What is happening here? These pictures are fabulous, in the way something in a dream or nightmare is like a fable. Hillary Clinton standing at an executive desk with not one thing out of place, but a half-rotten apple sits on the desk.
What amazes me is that LaChappelle pulls all these people. Courtney Love is really Courtney Love, and Hillary is really Hillary. Kanye West is Kanye West wearing a crown of thorns. I suppose there's no end to celebrity ego so people are willing to volunteer for his photographs, except LaChapelle is obviously skewering these figures. At the minimum he plays games of irony with their image or their legacy. He deflates their celebrity 'brand' and really repossesses their faces for his own work. Justin Timberlake dressed as Elton John. Pamela Anderson throttling a bloodied Tommy Lee with a big smile on her face, like something out of a slasher flick from the 1970's.
But the book is not all celebrities. There are spreads of seemingly ordinary people doing what appear to be revoltingly stupid things. A man with a handgun on his dresser and a baby bottle in his hand is pouring candy liquor in it to give to an already inebriated child. There is an obvious element of theater to these vignettes, a feeling that you're looking into a shadow box from the imaginary 4th wall.
I had never seen LaChapelle's work before picking up this book. The honest freakishness of his pictures remind me of Diane Arbus. The slick, highly processed magazine feel of them reminds me of Annie Liebovitz. And the humor at the expense of the viewer reminds me of Damien Hirst. All in all, this is a book of challenging pictures. I would not leave on the coffee table for if the family are bringing young children by the house, but older kids will get the celebrity-skewering and consumer-skewering nature of the work quite well.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, Dec 29 2010
By Robert J. Gladys "Hitchhiker" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: David LaChapelle: Heaven To Hell (Hardcover)
I loved this book. it was so refreshing to see pictures with bright and vivid colors. and just when you think that photographers have done it all, you look at a book like this and see fresh images. I highly recommend this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome for LaChapelle fans, July 29 2011
By MK "mk13books" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: David LaChapelle: Heaven To Hell (Hardcover)
Disturbingly beautiful photographic art. Each photo is richly detailed. PS. It is a huge coffee table book that weighs a ton...def a conversation piece.
