68+ David LaChapelle Quotes On Art, Music And Visionary

David LaChapelle is an American photographer, director and artist. He is best known for his vibrant and often surreal images that blend pop culture, advertising and fine art. He has shot for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Vogue, and has directed music videos for artists such as Elton John, Moby and Madonna. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David LaChapelle on art, life, music.

Top 10 David LaChapelle Quotes

1. People say photographs don't lie, mine do.
2. Prostitutes go to heaven. It's their clients that go to hell.
3. 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.
4. I'm a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying 'I'm a photographer.'
5. 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.
6. I have no interest in being famous. I just want to make famous photographs.
7. The adornment of the body is a human need. I don't see anything superficial about it unless your life becomes very materialistic.
8. I'm part of what I consider the entertainment industry. For my photos to be entertaining, they have to be provocative and new.
9. I like thinking about the fragility of the human flesh and our bodies - our decay and eventual death.
10. There's nothing that symbolizes loss or grief more than a mother losing a child.

David LaChapelle Short Quotes

• My dream since I was a kid was to show in a gallery.
• There is nothing ugly in sexuality or in the body. It's human!
• My work is about making candy for the eyes. It's about grabbing your attention.
• I shoot fantasy. If you want reality, ride the bus
• I never wanted to be famous. I always wanted to take famous photographs.
• I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.
• If you want reality take the bus.
• I still go to church occasionally. I went the other day and found peace.
• The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.
• In the fashion world, I was always an outsider, but I made people look good, so I had a career.

David LaChapelle Quotes About Life

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. — David LaChapelle

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

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

David LaChapelle Quotes About Love

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. — David LaChapelle

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

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

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

David LaChapelle Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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! — David LaChapelle

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! — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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

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... — David LaChapelle

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! — David LaChapelle

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]. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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]. — David LaChapelle

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

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

The adornment of the body is a human need. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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

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

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

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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! — David LaChapelle

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! — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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

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

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! — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

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. — David LaChapelle

Life Lessons by David LaChapelle

1. David LaChapelle's work emphasizes the importance of pushing the boundaries of creativity and not being afraid to experiment with different techniques and ideas.
2. His work also serves as a reminder of the power of art to make a statement and to capture the attention of viewers.
3. His work is a great example of how art can be used to make a powerful impact and to inspire others.