David lachapelle quotes

You can't change people's minds, we are not God. We can do our best to do what we do, whatever job we have to bring sort of goodness out there. But we can't change people. As an artist what I can do is to communicate!

I was working in this very bombastic style. I didn't really know about style. I didn't think about it: I did what I was interested in, what I was attracted to, what I was drawn to. I was drawn to color, and I was drawn to humor, and I was drawn to sexuality and spontaneity. It was all really intuitive. I never really thought, "Well this is the style...

I love fashion and beauty and all those things, I still do but I think that it has changed the shift, that the greed is ruling the planet right now.

I think we're in a post-pornographic time and nothing seems shocking, but everything remains carnal no matter what you do.

There's nothing that symbolizes loss or grief more than a mother losing a child.

I'm part of what I consider the entertainment industry. For my photos to be entertaining, they have to be provocative and new.

The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.

The adornment of the body is a human need.

Michael [Jackson] had paintings of himself at Neverland depicting himself as a knight and surrounded by cherubs and angels. People might think he's an egomaniac, but he's not. It's because the world turned against him.

People will get tired of overly retouched images soon and they'll want something different. If people have too much reality, they want fantasy. What matters most is what the image communicates. I remember the first roll of film I shot at high school, the contact sheet went from these really worthy images of cracks in the wall and ended up with all of my dancer friends naked in Renaissance poses.

I never wanted to be famous. I always wanted to take famous photographs.

As an artist you have a choice. You can add more confusion and darkness to the world or you can shine a light, make a beauty.

The matriarchal society 1300 years ago in Egypt was a peaceful society; that's where you had no war for thousands of years! When they switched to patriarchal society, when the male energy ruled, we became obsessed with the greed. Now we are in this time of intense greed!

Every culture has beauty and decorations of body. This is not of itself superficial, this is very human. Decorating when it becomes out of balance, when it becomes about the materialism, about how many shoes, how many handbags, how expensive they are, and the status, then it's no longer just about an expression or looking beautiful, that's more about 'I HAVE MONEY, I AM RICH'. It felt out of balance.

If you watch Michael Jackson [1992] concerts from Budapest and compare it to a Madonna concert of today, you'll see such uplifting beauty and a message that you won't see in any other artist of our time.

My biggest advice would be to take the pictures you want to take. Don’t think about the marketplace, what sells or what an editor might say. And don’t think about style. It’s all bullshit and surface stuff. Style happens.

We are in this time of corporations being so greedy and global. Some people want to call it the apocalypse. When I was born it was half the people on the planet. It has doubled in my life time. This is not sustainable for the earth; of course we are going somewhere. So we have to live preciously, we have to live each day with care!

With mania, is it dangerous to ride that euphoric feeling. You feel very animated and creative; I would fill journals with drawings. It feels good and you want it to last, but it can lead to being delusional. The delusions can be as real as you thinking you can fly.

As you are working on ideas, you are in a bubble, working on your images. What's important to me in my work, I like this idea of communicating through a piece of art so works don't have to be exchanged. They're okay and they're helpful but most importantly that the image will convey something in my mind that I was trying to communicate and then you have that connection.

People get devalued in Hollywood when they age, despite all their efforts to stay relevant and beautiful and young. They can't get jobs anymore.

You work with people who are obsessive about shopping, obsessive about owning things and buying things, like this purchase is going to make them happy. And you want to say to them, You know, no amount of real estate is gonna fill that void.

Success to me is being a good person, treating people well.

You just do what you love, and then a style happens later on.

It's much harder to work for yourself, by yourself, than to create work for a gallery, because there are no limits and you can do anything you want. It's always easier when you have a parameter, when you have a limit. You can work within the limit and push it and walk the line, but when you're given absolutely no limits, it's harder. You must really think. It's more challenging.

Prostitutes go to heaven. It's their clients that go to hell.

I have this idea that you can use glamour and still have it represent something that matters.

My work is about making candy for the eyes. It's about grabbing your attention.

We have the ability to make the connection, make the time to pray and meditate. We have to find our inner voice that will guide us. But we can only find it if we get quiet.

There are going to be people doing the talking and people who get talked about, choose, which one do you want to be?

The minute you point a camera at something, you are manipulating the image, because you are cropping out whatever is to the left and right of it. The minute you put a light on someone, you are manipulating the image.

I wanted it to provide an escape route, I wanted to make pictures that were fantastic and took you into another world, one that was brighter. I started off with this idea.

The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that’s old people’s hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that’s what you’ve got, and then think about what you want to see. Not anyone else.

I'm a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying 'I'm a photographer.'

My idea was that if I took a picture of somebody and years later, or whenever, they would die and if someone wanted to know who this person was, they could take one of these pictures and it would tell who the person was.

I like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas more than the actual one.

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

The industrial revolution fueled all of humanity, everything we do has been exploding ever since. It's been the biggest most impacting thing, not only for human beings in the last 250 million years, but also the planet, which caused the ice age, which buried the forest. It's this circle because of the industrial revolution, it's neither good or bad, it enabled all of modernization, extended our life, it changed everything. It's the most impactful thing that happened to the planet and the people.

People say photographs don't lie, mine do.

The cruelty, war and violence, this is evil, wrong and dark and that's what we should hide from the children, not a human body!

Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I'm always looking beyond the surface. I've done that ever since I first picked up a camera.

Pictures are an escape. They should be bigger than life. In the same way, celebrities provide an escape from the mundane. They are photographed so we can worship them - so they are worthy of our worship.

If you want reality take the bus.

I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.

In the fashion world, I was always an outsider, but I made people look good, so I had a career.

What's shocking is cruelty and torture, and that's become our entertainment. Kids can play violent video games, but God forbid they look at a naked woman. That's pornography, that's perverse. No!

I believe Michael [Jackson] in a sense is an American martyr. Martyrs are persecuted and Michael was persecuted. Michael was innocent and martyrs are innocent. If you go on YouTube and watch interviews with Michael, you don't see a crack in the facade. There's this purity and this innocence that continued [throughout his life].

My dream since I was a kid was to show in a gallery.

I have always gone to nature, since I was a kid. I was brought up in the woods, I did not have lots of friends, so I spent lot of time alone. My mother always loved to live in the forest; she loved gardens, birds and nature and taught me a deep respect for that. She taught me about growing food and vegetables and to take care of animals. They also have feelings. So nature was always something sacred for me, the place I can go, meditate and pray. It's like a church in the nature for me.

I think that the world is really in very dark ages. In America this could have never been showed, we are even more lost over there than in Europe. We are very lost!

There is nothing ugly in sexuality or in the body. It's human!

My pictures are about getting as far away from reality as possible. Dreams should be part of our everyday life.

We're bombarded with images. Take the time to stop and look at something then connect with them and maybe they're thinking the same thing, I used a lot of devices to catch the eye of people who have seen a lot of stuff, having worked in advertising and in editorial. I have learned to get someone to stop and look at something, that language.

I had this duality growing up with my dad being a strict Catholic and his brother being a priest and my mother finding God in nature, so I've taken a little from both [traditions].

I'm not condemning the Catholic Church - it's too big, it's like condemning a nation and that would be prejudiced.

The adornment of the body is a human need. I don't see anything superficial about it unless your life becomes very materialistic.

For me, it's easier to like more things than to dislike them; I'm not a critic in that sense. I find it easier to like more, to be more open and enjoy more things, which has given me more opportunities.

I love when people write about something, I learn what I'm doing through the eyes of a good critic, positive or negative. It's still a learning experience.

I love fashion, beauty, glamour. It's the mark of civilisation.

I am not God. But I can only do my role here on this planet. The role I feel I was given since I was a kid was to be making art and I only wanted to give and I never let money be my God.

What I'm doing here is pointing out an irony: Here you have an institution that has systematically protected pedophile priests and then you have an innocent Michael Jackson, who California spent millions of dollars trying to prosecute and could not do it because it was complete bulls - t.

I have no interest in being famous. I just want to make famous photographs.

My work is about making candy for the eyes. It's about grabbing your attention. Even though my work is appearing in magazines I am trying to make a large picture. I want my photographs to read like a poster.

Then I got this idea in my head that magazines were like a gallery and if you got your magazine page ripped out and someone stuck it on their refrigerator, then that was a museum – someone’s private museum.

I like the consistency of having people in my life for a long time.

I shoot fantasy. If you want reality, ride the bus

I like thinking about the fragility of the human flesh and our bodies - our decay and eventual death.

I went to art high school and thought I'd be a painter. Unfortunately I didn't finish high school, but that's always been part of my work.

I'll let criticism spoil breakfast, but I don't let it affect my lunch.

I've never wanted to be part of an inner circle of any scene. I've always been an outsider looking to question and subvert.

I still go to church occasionally. I went the other day and found peace.

I never want people to be repulsed with my pictures; I always want to attract people.

I didn’t see any difference between being a photographer or being an artist. I didn’t make those boundaries. If someone wants to think it’s art, that’s great, but I’ll let history decide.