Relevance to my work:

LaChapelle’s work deals with consumerism in today’s culture. Through his series Earth Laughs in Flowers LaChapelle references the old Dutch masters who in there time dealt with the theme of vanity, the current state of consumerism in respect to their Christian beliefs of life after death. LaChapelle’s interest in spirituality leads him to use Christian imagery to represent his personal investigation into life after death. LaChapelle’s contemporary vanitas’ intrigue me into what is going on behind the scenes and what LaChapelle’s beliefs. His use of vanitas flower still life is something that I have continued to use within my work.

In the same way to both Mark Wallinger and Damien Hirst, LaChapelle has used the vanitas tradition of the Dutch Still Life painters to look at ideas of spirituality and the transience of life. Similarly to Jesus is my homeboy LaChapelle is using these ideas to explore his own beliefs of life after death.

The title Earth Laughs in Flowers is based on the poem ‘Hamatreva’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Emerson’s poem questions the arrogance of human achievement using flowers to ridicule humanity’s love for physical gain in the light of its mortality. Both LaChapelle’s time period and that of the Baroque Dutch Still Life artist were times of extraordinary commercialism, and these responses bring to the viewer’s minds the fragility of their lives (Cranfield 2012: 7).

Consumerism and instant gratification are the life-blood of the fashion photography industry. LaChapelle responded to the banality of this hedonistic culture by using his photography as a means to search for a sense of spirituality. This is reflected in his fine art photography. The series of photographs Earth Laughs in Flowers shows a contemporary representation of the Dutch Still Life flower paintings. Traditionally in these paintings an exotic bunch of flowers and fruit would be exquisitely painted to look beautifully appealing at first glance, but when a closer look at the painting is taken, rotting fruit and wilting flowers with bugs crawling over them are revealed, for example Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life Flowers in a Glass. The rotten fruit and wilting flowers are symbols of the vanitas theme, the transience of life. LaChapelle uses this same imagery in these photographs to depict that ‘like the flower we will wilt and age and decay and eventually die. And it makes you look at life in a more precious way’ (Powell and Fox 2012). This symbolism is based on a passage in the book of James:

For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits (Crossway Bible 2002, James 1:11).

LaChapelle upends tradition in The Earth Laughs in Flowers by subtly including within the flowers and fruits a variety of more contemporary goods: mobile phones, cigarette butts, Barbie dolls and Starbucks iced coffee cups. This cluttered disorderliness is a commentary on the contemporary culture of consumerism. Using these cheap discarded objects creates a modern interpretation of the vanitas theme that draws upon the emptiness of the consumption of never ending physical items.

CRANFIELD, N.W.S. (2012). ‘David LaChapelle: Earth Laughs in Flowers’. Art and Christianity. Issue 70, 7. Available from: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=27e081f9-85a0-4f01-bc17-9cb353ffe0d1%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4101. Date accessed: [20/03/14].

POWELL, J., FOX, K. (2012). ‘David LaChapelle: ‘Like the flower we will wilt and die’ – audio slideshow’. The Guardian. [11/01/14].  Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/interactive/2012/feb/17/david-lachapelle-photographer-new-exhibition. Date accessed: [20/03/14].

CROSSWAY BIBLES. (2002). The Bible, English Standard Version. HarperCollins Publishers: London.