Wednesday 28 November 2007

palazzo reale II, david lachapelle

this weekend, i finally hung up the poster i bought at the second exhibition i saw in milano at the palazzo reale, an exhibition with photographies by david lachapelle. i went to see the exhibition together with rana and some of her friends, but as everyone had his or her own pace, i basically saw most of it on my own anyway.
the exhibition was some kind of retrospective, it covered a huge part of lachapelles work from "lost" pictures from the 70s via star-portraits and musicvideos of the 90s till his most recent works. it was not sorted chronologically, but rather following different themes that come up in the course of his work as a photographer, with the result of a highly imaginative and to a certain extend complex show.

there were a lot of pictures which i liked for totally different reasons, some for the energy which was displayed, some for their sheer beauty, some others for the colours, and all of them for giving me a lot to think.
the most interesting, i thought, was a series in which he cited classic pieces of christian art, like the pieta in st.peter in rome, with courtney love as the maria, some young man looking like kurt cobain on her knees. there were other biblical themes to see as well, all of them in contemporary settings such as new york and in bright colours.
another series that fascinated me is called "awakened", a series of whole-body-portraits of people under water, fully dressed. the colours were bleak, which is a strong contrast to most of lachepelles other pictures, and it never seemed to be quite sure if these people were really alive.

the picture i bought as a poster for my room is, i think, part of a series called "small landmarks", a series with beautiful models with big hair in blonde and red in a park with miniature models of castles and other landmarks. it is called "collapse in a garden"...

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