All American: Patriotism and Desire

David LaChapelle's photographs are more than any eyes can absorb where they stand in the middle of the floor at the Tony Shafrazi gallery in SoHo. LaChapelle's prints are hung mostly along one huge wall. They are glossy digital C-prints behind plexiglass, many as large as 48-by-70 inches. The photographs are unframed and mounted closely together, without labels, to form an intoxicating montage--a technicolor orgasm of blues, pinks, yellows, sleek curves, and slashing diagonals.

LaChapelle has said, "I like to see outrageousness and sexiness and things that are out of control." His photographs do not just embody all of these qualities, they push against and through them into the realm of total saturation. It is easy to recognize many celebrities in LaChapelle's photographs. He has done many ubiquitous ad campaigns, including shoots for MAC and the publicity shots for Mariah Carey's "Glitter." He also creates photographs for Rolling Stone and other popular music and fashion magazines.

Many of the photographs at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery are not fodder for popular media. In "Pam in Terrarium," Pamela Anderson poses almost naked in a glass case filled with plants, like a museum diorama. The terrarium itself is in a typical suburban living room, with boring furniture, a low wooden coffee table, and books and trophies on the shelves. Anderson, with a flower in her hair, appears frozen there, preserved, waiting to be seen. In "Puff Daddy with Golden Girl," Puff Daddy is crouched over an apparently dead woman whose skin and afro are completely gold. He is licking his lips, his skin glistens, gold chains sway over the body, and the "Bad Boy" tattoo on his bicep catches the light.

Some of LaChapelle's models are less recognizable and not so famous. Amanda Lepore, an uberflawless transsexual whose features are extreme replications of femininity, is one of LaChapelle's favorite models. Last week, I saw Lepore dancing on a platform at a Nina Hagen concert, black tape Xed over her nipples. In "Hollywood Nights," Lepore crouches on a large round mirror where huge lines of white powder lie in rays around her. She holds a giant straw in her hands, her skin translucent. In "Amanda, David, Chair," Lepore stands naked, powdery-white between a plaster David statue and a white chair. In another deferential (or irreverent?) nod to popular art, LaChapelle transposes Lepore's face onto a Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe. Lepore's features are drawn taut across her face--her turquoise eye shadow, rosy blush, and plump red lips further exaggerate what Warhol intended as a statement of pop culture's exaggerated iconography.

Iconography is a crucial part of LaChapelle's work. He captures both its glamour and its perversity. Paris Hilton, with her middle finger directed angrily at the lens as she stands in the middle of her grandmother's posh apartment, is one example. So is "Pink Electric Chair," a photograph of a glossy magenta electric chair with black leather straps in a room with one curtained window, where a pair of white rhinestone high heels lies askew on the black linoleum floor.

The title of the show, "All American," encompasses the variety of icons that LaChapelle creates and captures in his photographs. The digital sheen of his prints, the moist skins and flawless bodies, the polished surfaces and saturated colors speak to the most patriotic duty of all Americans--limitless consumption. The conspicuous consumption of media, pop culture, fashion, music, art, drugs, sex, and lust is the most prominent subject of LaChapelle's photographs. They speak the language of desire which we all speak fluently, all the time, one of the most outstanding (and, according to politicians, important) features of any American.

LaChapelle's prints are unframed, unbounded, and so is his imagination. He urges his viewers to emancipate their own imaginations and desires, and he succeeds. Even the most perverse and perverted of his photographs is unflinchingly gorgeous. Even "Mama Smoked a Crack Pipe and Wore Fancy Shoes," in which a sweet pink bedroom has apparently exploded, leaving behind a black charred bed with a burned quilt, torn pink dust ruffle, and cute debris everywhere, is beautiful. This photograph, like "Pink Electric Chair," invokes a narrative even when the characters are absent. In the viewer's imagination, however, these characters are undoubtedly gorgeous and trashy. Past the "Vivid Girls" series in the back of the gallery--four photographs which morph art and pornography, only slightly more that LaChapelle's other pictures--there is a staircase that leads down to a small space where Dennis Hopper's Cape Town photographs are hung. These prints are like a folk music concert after a punk rock show. Subdued and soothing, Hopper captures the easy lines and soft shapes of the faces and landscape of South Africa. There is a bench to sit on, an easy place to catch one's breath, to admire the smiling faces and blue waters before ascending back into the insistent world of LaChapelle.

"All American," the photographs of David LaChapelle, and Dennis Hopper's "Cape Town" are on view through Sept. 21. Tony Shafrazi Gallery. 119 Wooster between Prince and Spring Streets.