How did you meet Warhol?

I went to New York when I was 15, I went to School of the Arts for two years, I came back to New York when I was 17. I lived on First Avenue and First Street with this girl Vanessa, she's still in the same apartment. And my goal was to work with Andy Warhol. He was my favorite artist. So I would just go up to him and show him my pictures from high school...

So you found out where he was?

I met him in the club, the Ritz, at a Psychedelic Furs concert. And he said, "Oh, come show me your pictures." And I did, the next day. And then I just kept going back. This was way after he was shot and stuff. But he was very accessible in New York. He was such a part of New York. You would see Andy out, and the scene was smaller then. You'd see Andy a lot. I was persistent. I just really wanted to work with him.

He was so generous to me -- not monetarily, just encouragement-wise. He knew I liked Prince, so he brought me to a Prince concert. He introduced me, and I was nobody, just starting out. People would come up to him, and he'd always defer the attention onto whoever he was with, that's why he liked to be with celebrities. That's why he was like, "Oh, this is Grace Jones!" because the attention on him freaked him out. So we were at the Prince concert, and he says, "Oh, this is David LaChapelle, the famous photographer!" I was a nobody, I was a kid.

That was my finishing school, that was my college. I got to understand deadlines, understand working in the business and being around that stuff. I was like an intern, hanging out all the time and eating the leftovers from the lunches.

What was your first assignment at Interview?

It was the Beastie Boys, 1984, first picture of them ever published, in Times Square. And I worked for him every year until he died, and then I shot, just by coincidence, the last sitting of Andy. The only time I ever did a portrait of him was two weeks before he died [in 1987], so they became the last photos of Andy.

Do you find yourself wanting to do the same thing that Warhol did, to put attention on others?

I don't compare myself to Andy at all. There was only one Andy Warhol; there will never be another person like him. I can only aspire to be as good as I can, by doing what I want to do and never holding back. That was one thing I learned from Andy: He was always trying different things. He'd do photography and film and he'd pee on the canvas. He did what he wanted to do, what was really interesting to him.

Do you think as you get bigger, it's harder to stay true to that?

No, I don't think that way at all. I feel like I'm just starting out. I'm just starting a whole new chapter in my life.

Did you ever find yourself at, say, a gallery opening thinking that it was too far away from where you want to be and what you believe in?

I've shown at galleries, but pictures I showed in galleries were pictures I shot for magazines.

So it's commercial art.

Yeah, but it's everything I love. They can call it commercial, they can call it art, it doesn't matter what they call it. It's my pictures. People say, "Well, do you have your private work?" I'm like, "No, everything I do is personal." It's all personal. But I'm going to be showing this film in a gallery in the summer once we have our release. I'm not going to exclude anything. I don't believe in those ideas of high and low [art].

The image that sticks out in my mind the most clearly from your work is the one of that cool-looking Asian woman with the freckled doll face.

Oh yes. Devon Aoki. Her father owns Benihana.

Really? The picture I remember is of her holding a fish...

She's in an art gallery, in front of pictures of ice.

There was something so unforgettable about it. Was that something you composed yourself?

Yeah, they're always my concepts and ideas. That's the fun part of it.

Was that a commissioned thing?

Yeah, it's a fashion shoot, but I can pick the clothes and the setting and everything in there. For me, if there's not a shoe in it it's less interesting. I like that there's something in there that's part of the world.

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