David Lachapelle: Landscape Exhibition

In June I visited the David Lachapelle Landscape Exhibition at Robilant & Voena in London.  I didn't realise it at the time (I hadn't yet made the decision to take Context and Narrative), but looking back this collection is very relevant to this course.

When you first see the images, (click the link above, then selected works and scroll through 1/14) you are first amazed by the clarity, lucidity and dreamlike appearance of what seem to be enormous structures - the first eight being oil refineries.  The photographs in the exhibition were enormous.  I felt like I could walk in to them.  Then when you look more closely, you realise that these are models made from every day items.  The message is about the oil industry and all the products that we now rely on and also dispose of in our "throw away" society as a consequence.  The more you look the more you see; you could literally spend hours trying to make out all the items.  The models were built in Hollywood by set designers, directed photographed by Lachapelle.  These pictures seem magical at first but when you realise the underlying issue of recycling and consequences of oil production they are of course unmagical.

These images challenge our ideas of reality and perception in photography because they aren't what they first seem.  Having briefly read through the course materials, they may be a useful reference to go back to for Assignment Five.

Websites

• David Lachapelle (2014) [online] available from http://www.davidlachapelle.com/exhibitions/2014-05-16_robilant-and-voena-london/?ss=selected [accessed 13 July 2014]