Tuesday, April 25, 2006
David LaChapelle Faces His (Milky) Demons
David LaChapelle keeps mentioning in The Guardian how kids at school used to bully him by throwing milk cartons at his head. From Feb 06:
Witness also this famous shot from 1996:
And this equally risque Naomi Campbell pose from 1999:
He got Brooke Shields to do this with whipped cream in 2000:
He then sold out entirely to Big Dairy with a series of ten Got Milk? ads of which this is obviously my favourite: 
It seems as though LaChapelle has taken the Oprah truism "Turn your wounds into wisdom." at face value. He really makes his point that he's conquered the "badly dressed bullies", with this picture of Mark Wahlberg:
LaChapelle would have us believe that this dairy tomfoolery is pure Freudian reaction formation, channeling his negative emotions into creative expression. I think it is just another example of an (admittedly talented) visual artist trying to add intellectual depth to his work. The combination of milk and naked celebrities is just naturally aesthetically diverting. I salute him anyway, for beating lactophobia, in this era when lactose intolerance is so chic.
"He'd walk into the cafeteria dressed as a Fifties rocker, or as a cowboy with a pink and black shirt and cowboy boots, and milk cartons would fly at him from every direction, hitting him on the head."Almost self-parodically he put a sartorial twist on this childhood nightmare in an interview today:
"Of all the bad memories that he has of his schooldays, among the worst, says LaChapelle, is when he had milk cartons thrown at him by badly dressed bullies."It even helped him out on the streets of Compton when he was shooting Rize:
"What do you know about the hood?" he recalls people asking. "And I said, 'Well, you weren't with me when I was at high school and I couldn't go to the cafeteria because milk cartons were getting thrown in every direction. If that's not being marginalised, what is?"Far from succumbing to an overpowering dairy phobia, LaChapelle has actually spent his whole career confronting milk head on. He gets underway early in the mid-nineties with these portraits of The Beasties and Lili Taylor with milkshakes:
Witness also this famous shot from 1996:And this equally risque Naomi Campbell pose from 1999:He got Brooke Shields to do this with whipped cream in 2000:He then sold out entirely to Big Dairy with a series of ten Got Milk? ads of which this is obviously my favourite: 
It seems as though LaChapelle has taken the Oprah truism "Turn your wounds into wisdom." at face value. He really makes his point that he's conquered the "badly dressed bullies", with this picture of Mark Wahlberg:
LaChapelle would have us believe that this dairy tomfoolery is pure Freudian reaction formation, channeling his negative emotions into creative expression. I think it is just another example of an (admittedly talented) visual artist trying to add intellectual depth to his work. The combination of milk and naked celebrities is just naturally aesthetically diverting. I salute him anyway, for beating lactophobia, in this era when lactose intolerance is so chic.Tags: lachapelle, milk
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