This week Miami is gearing up for Art Basel where leading galleries from around the globe gather to showcase significant works of art from the masters of modern and contemporary art. To kick off this art-filled weekend, world renowned artist David LaChapelle’s will be hosting a book launch for the anticipated release of his new books.
LaChapelle has spent the past three decades shooting some of the most luminous stars of his generation and framing the realms of fashion, celebrity, sex and style into his own distinct, unorthodox aesthetics. In this exclusive collector’s edition, the artist’s first publication in a decade, TASCHEN presents two defining periods in LaChapelle’s career: his rise to stardom in the white heat of ’80s New York, and his creative renaissance following his “disappearance” from the fashion scene, post-2006.
“It has been 10 years now since the release of my last book. I try to live by following my intuition and it felt like the right time to release 30 years of unpublished work in two volumes, Lost + Found and Good News. The project would typically take six months to produce, but we ended up spending three years on the books―and to date, it has been the most special and important project of my career,” shares LaChapelle.
Lost + Found, Part 1 traces LaChapelle’s emergence through Warhol’s Interview magazine and his ascent to the status of global icon in the fashion world. Meanwhile, Good News, Part 2 explores LaChapelle’s spiritual and artistic revival following his retreat to a rural idyll in West Maui, Hawaii.
Featuring a monumental curation of previously unpublished images, it is an arresting body of work that features famous faces like Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Miley Cyrus, Pamela Anderson and many more. It represents the final chapter of LaChapelle’s narrative in a collection of books that have captivated a generation of viewers across the globe.
“We are living in a time of darkness and confusion,” he says. “I purposed to create a visual manuscript that offers light and clarity. I hope the audience can discover a new world with these books… a world that shows how paradise can exist in our internal and external experience.”
Come celebrate this Friday, December 8th during Art Basel for the launch of David LaChapelle’s two new books Lost + Found and Good News from 6pm to 9pm at TASCHEN (1111 Lincoln Road).
