Photos of stars at world auctions
On October 21 Bonhams held an auction of contemporary works of art featuring paintings, graphic art, sculptures, and, of course, photographs by prominent photo artists of the late XX century. Nowadays prices on photos by fashionable artists often exceed auction cost of oil paintings. For instance, photos of flowers by a legendary artist Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) were sold at the October 10 Christie’s auction for $200,000 and photos by Richard Avedon fetched $300,000.
Bonhams sales featured seventeen large format photographs of Hollywood stars by David LaChapelle – sexy, flashy, surreal and just plain fun images of Giselle Bundchen, Pamela Anderson, Cameron Diaz, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Anna Kournikova and others. The models situated in futuristic fashion shoots and erotically charged settings. Each work was from an edition of three and carried an estimate of GBP8,000–12,000. Portrait of Cameron Diaz was sold for GBP8,000, Pamela Anderson’s photo made GBP10,000, the image of Christina Aguilera brought GBP6,000, Lil' Kim – GBP10,000, while the portrait of Kournikova failed to sell.
David LaChapelle (b.1968) who is often called «Fellini of photography», at the age of 19 worked as a busboy at New York’s celebrated discotheque, Studio 54. It was there that Chapelle was «discovered» by Andy Warhol, who gave him his first professional job shooting for American publication, Interview. Since that time, LaChapelle’s photographic work has appeared in advertising campaigns, album covers and fashion magazines from Vogue, The Face, to Vanity Fair and I-D. Photo Magazine hailed him as «one of the ten most important photographers now». LaChapelle has also lent his talent to directing award-winning music videos for Jennifer Lopez, Moby, Elton John, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston among others.
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