David LaChapelle: make Believe

September 2022-January 2023

make Believe was a survey of David LaChapelle’s world-renowned artistic career. This exhibition was the only ever building-wide takeover for Fotografiska New York, and reprises LaChapelle’s decade-long legacy as the first artist to exhibit museum-wide in Fotografiska Stockholm.

In make Believe, more than 150 works represented David’s oeuvre from 1984 to 2022. The photographic medium extends into stained glass imagery, film, and collage. make Believe was curated with the visitor experience in mind. Moving through the artist’s representations of humanity, which blur the boundaries between fantasy and truth. One is transported into a metaphysical world of celebrity, environmental collapse, religious mysticism, and historical allegory in art. The final space presented lush landscapes and paradisical imagery, signaling a sublime world of hope and redemption.

The longevity of LaChapelle’s iconic images establishes him as one of the most significant photographers of the modern era.

As observed by Amy Spindler in her 1997 New York Times review, “Mr. LaChapelle is certain to influence the work of a new generation of photographers in the same way that Mr. Avedon pioneered so much of what is familiar today.” Twenty-five years later, Spindler’s prophecy has come to pass.