Best 63 quotes of David Lachapelle on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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].

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.

If you want reality take the bus.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

People say photographs don't lie, mine do.

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.

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.

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

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

The adornment of the body is a human need.

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

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!

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.

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.