Home » Archives » June 2007 » LACHAPELLE IN BUENOS AIRES’ MALBA MUSEUM: THE CONTINUING VALIDATION OF THE ART OF COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY
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06/01/2007: "LACHAPELLE IN BUENOS AIRES’ MALBA MUSEUM: THE CONTINUING VALIDATION OF THE ART OF COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY" by Veronica Caminos
Buenos Aires’ recent museum exhibit of David LaChapelle’s opulent, ultra-vivid color photographs and music videos marks another milestone in a process rapidly unfolding in the Argentine capital: the validation of Color Photography as a valuable and culturally significant art form. Since my arrival in Buenos Aires three short years ago, I have witnessed this artistic blossoming before my very eyes – Color Photography breaking out of the confining cocoons of photojournalism, commercial advertising, and wedding documentation to brandish its still-wet dazzling iridescent wings and burst into flight as a new radiant art form.I imagine that black and white photography had to undergo a similar transformation sixty to seventy years ago, and have the impression that the birth of the vivid butterfly that is the Artform of Color Photography occurred in the US and Europe at about the same time… the mid to late sixty’s. But in Argentina, a country where Painting still reigns over all other art forms, where even Black and White Photography stills seems to struggle to hold a minor role among the Arts, the acceptance of Color Photography as a valid form of art has taken a few decades longer.
The Museum of Latin American Arts in Buenos Aires (aka, the MALBA) has played a critical role in this transformation, not only with the 2007 “Heaven To Hell” exhibit of photographer David LaChapelle’s work (March 30th to May 21st), but also with the 2005 exhibit of the color work of Argentine photographer Alejandro Kuropatwa.
LaChapelle’s work, with its intensely saturated colors, its drama and fantasy, its almost baroque imagery and styling, highlights the offerings of the Art of Color Photography: images with brightness, energy and wham!, and the instant stamp of undeniable contemporanity… images that say NOW! BIG! BOLD! RICH!... that untimidly declare – “Get over the fact that I’m not a one-in-a million, that I’m made with the aid of technology, that I’m reproducible. Accpet that the Industrial Revolution has occurred – yes, even in the Arts – and enjoy me for what I am and the beauty I can offer you! ENJOY!! DELIGHT IN ME!
To see the images in the LaChapelle show is to understand what I mean. It´s bizarre Hollywood kitsch is definitely not for everyone, but the pieces definitely underscore the shear power of the Color Photograph. How to describe them? Imagine the overt sensuality of a Helmut Newton Big Nude, add a large dose of the pop glam of a Warhol celebrity portrait, throw in three or four bucketfuls of splashy bright latex paint (say, fuschia, banana yellow, Kelly green, and Yves Klein blue)… then add a cup of provocative soap opera drama, another cupful of porn, a generous helping of comedy, and a tattoo or two, and – there you have it: a LaChapelle photograph!
The LaChapelle show is no longer at the MALBA, but the Art of the Color Photograph is still to be seen throughout the city of Buenos Aires…. From the stands of the huge ArteBA ’07 fair, to the walls of newly opened photographic galleries (like the Ernesto Catena Gallery in Palermo Viejo), to the collective shows in the Recoleta Cultural Center, to the still-fairly new BA Photo Fair at the Palais de Glace (mid-November). I, for one, am very pleased…….
