582. DAVID LACHAPELLE (USA, FÖDD 1963). "Negative Currency: 100 Yuan used as Negative", C-print, 76 x 157 cm.

DAVID LACHAPELLE USA, born 1963 "Negative Currency: 100 Yuan used as Negative" Signed David LaChapelle on accompanying certificate. Nr. 3/5. C-print, 76 x 157 cm.

Like a chameleon, photographer David LaChapelle has experimented with a multitude of techniques and photographic styles while challenging art audiences with his provocative image suites. Born in Connecticut, LaChapelle began exhibiting in New York galleries in the mid-1980s. Soon after, Andy Warhol offered him work at Interview Magazine. Through his unique approach to image-making, innovative vision, and highly recognizable arranged images, LaChapelle expanded the art of photography, and over the past 30 years, his images have become iconic archetypes of America at the turn of the millennium.

LaChapelle worked on the Negative Currency series for over two decades, starting back in 1990. In the series, he toyed with the idea of bills as photographic negatives, taking an enlarger into the darkroom to enlarge a US dollar bill. The result was a rose-tinted image showing both sides of the bill, manifesting the dual effects that money has on our society. Parallels can also be drawn to how traders illuminate banknotes to examine watermarks and their authenticity. These images, inspired by euros, US dollars and Israeli shekels, became icons of the positive and negative forces of capitalism, a kind of artistic seismographs with clear references to the global financial market, but also the art market of which LaChapelle is an active part. In the 2010s, LaChapelle continued to explore the series by creating notes of other currencies, such as the Peruvian pen, the Italian lire, and the Chinese yuan, of which this work is a part.