David LaChapelle: Jesus Is My Homeboy

I absolutely love David LaChapelle’s ‘Jesus Is My Homeboy’ series. He’s a noteworthy photographer who has photographed everyone from Uma Thurman to Britney Spears and worked for magazines such as Vogue and Rolling Stone. After going to visual art school in NYC he was offered his first professional job as a photographer by Andy Warhol for Interview magazine. He’s won numerous as a photographer and even directed commercials and films including the documentary, Rize which was released in 2005.



I’m already a fan of LaChapelle as a celebrity photographer but this was something that was totally refreshing to me. Usually his work is shiny, bright and colorful (a lot of the time risqué) and even if you didn’t get it, you always paid attention to it. This was no different. At first I was a bit skeptical, naturally. I think in this country the way we’re brought up, anything that has to do with Jesus is a touchy subject if it’s out of the church and/or the Bible. After looking at a few of the pieces, I really appreciate LaChapelle’s point of view. It’s very modern and puts things in retrospect. If Jesus were here now, why couldn’t be my homeboy? Why couldn’t he humble the hardest thugs? I mean back in the day he dealt with the same types of people. At the end of the day we’re all sinners – just like those mentioned in the Bible. My favorite piece is when the modern ‘Mary’ is washing Jesus’ feet with her hair (from John 12:3)…which really gives a literal meaning to “I worship the ground you walk on.”

It’s smart, innovative, and retrospective and we don’t have a lot of that in pop culture nowadays. David LaChapelle will definitely go down as one of the most brilliant artists in our time.

Above our pieces of the ‘Jesus is My Homeboy’ series and a video of the series being displayed at a Switzerland church.