Exhibition Review

Dave Lachapelle: Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

            The show I decided to go and see was the Dave Lachapelle exhibition that was titled Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? at the Staley Wise Gallery. Dave Lachapelle is a photographer who is still working in the field. He is mainly known for shooting well-known figures in pop culture including one of his first works of Andy Warhol who is another famous artist.  Lachapelle has works all over the country such as California and D.C. He also has work displayed in the UK, Belgium and France. This gallery showcased a bunch of his photos and one video that he took that were neatly placed on the walls of the gallery in nice wooden light brown frames.

            The photos and video of this exhibition were all of celebrities that have been very influential in pop culture and have been in the public’s eye for some time. The exhibit subjects were a mix of older and newer references such as Elton John, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears and Tupac. Even though almost all of his work is about fame, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Is and exhibition that focuses on the curiosity with fame and how the artist might deal with the fame. The pictures show this through compelling images with bold and abstract sexualized photos of these celebrities. Each one of these photos shows a different theme as to what we think fame means and how celebrities deal with it.

            All of the images were very interesting however, one that really stock out to me was the photo of Faye Dunaway titled “Day of the Locust”. Faye was a popular actress in the 70’s and did a lot of movies including Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown. This was a print of a photo he took that features Dunaway on top of a white limo that is surrounded by policemen trying to keep off the screaming fans as Faye looks distressed. This particular photo is a little different than most of his photos because no one was naked but, you could still tell that this was a Dave Lachapelle because of the vibrant colors highlighting Faye as well as the collage like style that he uses a lot in his works.

This photo stood out to me the most mainly because of the red fabric that is hanging off of her dress as well as the pain that is shown on her face. I found this piece very compelling and fitting with the idea of fame because it highlights the pain and exhaustion that a celebrity can face. As well as highlights the violence of the fans just so that they could meet her. This is shown through the emotion of the subject as well as all of people trying to get to her despite the police. This is very fitting with the exhibition because the pain of the lack of privacy that one can develop with fame. It also shows the craziness of fans that will do harmful things to reach them. This goes along with the theme of the exhibit because these two concepts are things that we associate with fame. I personally didn’t have any connections to this photo however, I have seen thing on the news that have been alarming of fans that would try some scary things in order to get to a public figure.

All in all, I found the entire gallery to be very compelling. Even though I’ve never been famous myself I can only imagen what it is like and what that kind of pressure is. I think Lachapelle was trying to get across that fame is not all it is cracked up to be and sometimes it can be very harmful. I think he was successful in doing that because of the emotion with the artists in the photos. Even though I didn’t expect to see so many naked bodies in the exhibit, I really did enjoy his work and would love to see more of his work. I will defiantly be looking for other photographers work in the near future. I really enjoyed going to the show.