jesusismyhomeboy worn by icon #pamelaanderson , just because your a celebrity doesn't mean you dont have good taste. Eventually, she told me to give her a call after she got out of work. She worked at some hospital where the shifts were from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night. She said, “Come on by. I’m gonna take my bath, and by the time I get outta my bath, you should be here.” I was like, “booty call,” you know? What’s the answer? “Well, I haven’t achieved enlightenment,” he laughs. “But I guess it’s balance. We have to get ourselves in alignment.” Does he not miss some of the whirlwind of those earlier chaotic days, the adrenaline? He nods a no. “You know Epictetus, the Greek philosopher? He’s like, we all have a role in life – play your role and live it to the fullest.” I came to L.A. to start a singing and acting career around 1980. Three of my sisters and my baby brother had all moved here from Texas. I stayed in Oklahoma for nine or ten months right before that, and in that time, I had about five jobs. There was a lot of prejudice there. I worked at a plant with the son of the county’s grand dragon, the leader of its section of the Ku Klux Klan, and we got into a fight. He responded, “This is detective so-and-so. I need to talk to you. We got an anonymous phone call that said you were involved in a robbery a few years ago.”

In 1992, the streets of LA were flooded with angry looters furious at the treatment of Rodney King, a victim of police brutality. They broke windows, stole from shops, and brutalized anyone who got in their way. The only printed silk screen for the “Jesus is My Homeboy” T-shirt was at the printers, and it vanished in the path of destruction left by the looters.It was seemingly gone forever, so Van Zan got on with his life, accepting his misfortune as simply the end of an era. All good things must come to an end, he thought. If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! Essay Writing Service Don’t judge other people, and God will not judge you. If you judge other people, you will be judged in the same way you judge them”. It is, in part, a consequence of having to fine-tune his mental health constantly, and the death of his mother (who, he used to say, first taught him photography) a couple of years ago; LaChapelle is bipolar, but antidepressants do not work for him and he needs to monitor his exercise and sleep to stop himself from slipping into an episode. “You want to ride the part that feels so good because your brain is working fast and ideas come more easily. You have more energy and everything flows, and you’re seeing things from a higher perspective,” he explains. A heavy “but” follows. Here, Jesus is portrayed as remarkably traditional and conspicuously white, draped in red and blue robes, echoing Leonard da Vinci's enduring mural from the 1490s, while the apostles in LaChapelle's version are of different races. Judging by their dress code, they are influenced by urban hip-hop culture.By purchasing the original prints and other products, you are helpingVan Zan to keep the “Jesus Is My Homeboy” Movement alive. David LaChapelle was born in Connecticut in 1963 and attended high school at North Carolina School of The Arts. Originally enrolled as a painter, David began to experiment in the medium of photography developing an analogue technique of hand-painting his own negatives to achieve a sublime spectrum of color before processing his film.

Van Zan Frater was a young Texan, recently relocated to Los Angeles. It was the 1980s, a time of great financial opportunity, and he was ready to make his place in the world. He was becoming familiar with the area, but didn’t know it well yet, so he pulled into the stark, unadorned parking lot of a run-down looking liquor store in South Central LA to use a pay phone. His guard was down when it should have been up. Way up. He opened his mouth to plead with them, but they didn’t seem to hear his words. They only became more excited by his distress, and they circled around him and closed in like the mouth of a great, hot beast. “Kill him, homeboy! Kill him!” said the throng of faces that blurred together in Van Zan’s waning vision. Van Zan put his hands up, palms to the sky, and he said, Someone wrote a comment online when I moved to Maui, like: ‘The person who gave us Paris Hilton and destroyed our culture is now gonna go live in the jungle.’ Did I really bring culture down?!” Well, didn’t he fetishise some of the dumber aspects of it? kanyewest wearing #jesus is my homeboy collaboration tee, before #kimkardashian ,before all other collaborations he knew where to go, #jesusismyhomeboy , #all inclusive always Jesus is My Homeboy” is way more than just an image.It is an epiphany. A revelation. It was not developed by a big fashion entity focused solely on making money. It was not created to cash in on a trend. “Jesus is My Homeboy” was born from a challenge that led to salvation; an inspiration fueled by a real life situation.

At age 17, LaChapelle moved to New York City. Following his first photography show at Gallery 303, he was hired by Andy Warhol to work at Interview Magazine. For an artist who regularly turns convention upside down, I find it interesting that LaChapelle chose to represent Jesus in such a traditional way—open-armed, stoic, and glowing like a nightlight (and unmistakably white). The choice was intentional, no doubt; I’m just trying to figure out what purpose it serves, because I feel that that sort of Jesus doesn’t fit comfortably into a modern-day context—he’s too rigid and inapproachable. In the photos, Jesus isn’t really hanging with his boys (or with his homegirl, Mary M.). Instead, it looks as if he dropped in from another planet. Any thoughts? Like many of the great masters, LaChapelle has been inspired by the classic nativity scene. While the artwork of Western religious narratives often glorified the church and portrayed Jesus in a more European mien, LaChapelle reimagines that tradition in this image, set in Africa. A few years later an aspiring fashion designer was poking through a second hand shop, looking for gems, when he came across a silk screen that he was very taken with. He began to produce and sell t-shirts featuring the image on the silk screen, and was very successful. The shirts became an international phenomenon, appearing on consumers from all walks of life. One day Van Zan opened a tattered copy of People magazine he found while waiting in line at the DMV, and he saw it. He saw his shirt.A grinning celebrity held out his chest proudly and pointed with both index fingers at the words, “Jesus is My Homeboy”. Then he saw his shirt on TV. Then, on the streets. Then he knew his message was being heard, and he was overjoyed. Here, the Virgin Mary holds the baby Jesus, sitting on the sand, surrounded by symbolism. In lieu of an ox, which represented patience in the Old Testament, LaChapelle features a man in an ox mask, nodding to the use of masks in religious and cultural ceremonies around the world. A bird replaces the traditional depiction of an angel on the scene, representing fertility, freedom, and the human soul. A leopard, considered to be the animal of a ruler, is represented, too, in the man drumming over the newborn, painted in spots.

LaChapelle decided to minimize his participation in commercial photography, and return to his roots by focusing on fine art photography. Since then, he has been the subject of exhibitions in both commercial galleries and leading public institutions around the world. When we did, my lawyer said, “Van Zan, tell them your story,” which I proceeded to do. Then my wife went off. She was like, “How dare y’all take his stuff and make it your own? He has nightmares about this.” When she finally got out of breath and couldn’t talk anymore, I said, “I wanna thank you for what you’ve done, ‘cause it doesn’t matter to me how Jesus’ name gets out. What matters is that it got out, and you guys took it to places I couldn’t. So you guys are the messengers — just like everybody who wears the T-shirt — but it saved my life.” Soon after, we signed a deal. One moment in a man’s life. One connection made between two men. One message heard around the world.He said, “Jesus is MY homeboy. And he’s your homeboy, and your homeboy,” and he pointed at random faces above him and he continued, “and your homeboy. Jesus is my homeboy and he is all of yours too. He is your homeboy.”

The apostles were not the aristocracy, they were not the well-to-do, they weren’t the popular people; they were sort of the dreamers and the misfits,” LaChapelle said in a 2008 interview for The Art Newspaper TV. If Jesus were here today, he said, he would be hanging out with the street people and the marginalized: the poor, the homeless, prostitutes, drug dealers, gangsters, and so on. And more than that, these people would have been his closest and most faithful band of followers. The covers of LaChapelle’s new books, Lost + Found Part I and Good News Part II. Photograph: TaschenEventually, I got to my sisters’ house. My date had called them and told them I may have gotten jumped, so they were relieved to see me. I guess my date had spotted the scene of the second robbery while driving around looking for me, but she couldn’t see who was going into the ambulance. My sisters had already started calling trauma centers. He stood down, and one by one the rest of the crowd stood down as well until Van Zan understood that if he stood up and walked away, he would not be beaten down again. By portraying them as a group of young men who are often stereotyped and even stigmatized by the clothes they wear, the work shares the sentiment that the apostles were perhaps a group of misfits, joined together with common beliefs and a sense of brotherhood.