February 6^th saw the dust officially blown out of every corner of Quai de Conti’s graceful old Hotel de la Monnaie and its ancient coin collections set rattling; David LaChapelle arrived in town. His largest exhibition ever to hit France burst onto the Parisian scene in an extravaganza of full-on, glorious Technicolor; the trademark style of one of the most influential photographers alive. Over 200 works created throughout the legendary lens man’s career have been snapping up column inches in every contemporary Parisian art magazine going.

The opening room, set to a melancholy backdrop of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’, introduces Europe to LaChapelle’s 2008 ‘Auguries of Innocence’ series with ‘The Crash’; 4 stunningly disturbing eight-foot high photographs of scrunched and twisted metal car parts, concertinaed so far as to ridicule their marketing-patter ‘Luxurious Power’ and ‘Intelligent Decadence’ titles.  But the real eye-popper dominating the room is ‘Decadence: The Insufficiency Of All Things Attainable’, a vast pop-up montage depicting an apocalyptic orgy of dying naked Adonis figures, posed statically among the material results of their copious spending: diamond-encrusted skulls, syringes, chained animals, solid gold mating pigs: this is excess, to excess, and its anti possession-obsession message is clear. Other big spenders sink beneath the floorboards into hellish flames, golden rings still on their fingers, and a glowing, Barbie-like Paris Hilton strides through the evidence of their unstoppable consumerism, queen of all.

Over-the-top, trance-like, glossed and polished to the extreme: LaChapelle’s works are typically out-of-this-world but also firmly grounded in it, permeated by all-too familiar symbols of modern expenditure that the artist perverts for effect. A Starbucks sign sinking beneath the waves in ‘Deluge’, a giant inflatable burger squashing a stilettoed model in ‘Death by Cheeseburger’, toned Action Man soldiers clutching shiny Blackberries and dying on the battlefields of ‘Holy War’: all are pawns in the construction of LaChapelle’s personal universes.  This latter work doesn’t play subtle with its imagery; a Jesus figure stands on the non-war side of the picture surrounded by lambs and children, his head glowing now and then with an uber-kitsch backlit halo: a Blake-worthy juxtaposition of Innocence and Experience all in one.

Compared to these epic giants, it’s a relief to look on the calm but creepy ‘Awakened’ photos of ordinary, fully-clothed people suspended in tanks of water and seeming out of place compared to the colour and glamour-drenched explosions occurring in the neighbouring rooms. The deathly feel lingering about these floating forms echoes LaChapelle’s preoccupation with the transcendental as well as his love of experimenting with the boundaries of reality, hyper-reality and surreality. In the ‘Meditation’ series displayed in another room he recreates recognisable Biblical scenes such as “Sermon” and “The Last Supper” by transposing a glowing Jesus figure onto a modern backdrop, with crowds of hip young beanie-and-baggy-trackie-clad ‘disciples’ hanging off his words. The effect is comic, almost cartoon-like, but the genuine devotion and empathy on the faces of the followers strikes a more authentic note than many of LaChapelle’s crazy stage sets and bored-looking models.

Ultra-kitsch and plastic-coated is what LaChapelle does best, but his sense of humour is refreshingly never far away: the ‘Recollections in America’ series has its own room full of grainy 70s photos bought on EBay, a far cry from his habitual glitz. Doctored, David-style, a group of old ladies now share a joke across the unconscious body of a drunken adolescent, a father pours alcohol into his baby’s milk bottle, and a young man wields a gun in the middle of a drinks party. Menacing overtones about the state of today’s world, perhaps, but they still made me giggle with their cheeky, student-like feel.

Only at the end of the exhibition, as if refusing to pander to their egos, are we given a glimpse of LaChapelle’s infamous ‘Star System’ series, where the A-list pose for their number one publicity-boosting photographer in costumes and scenarios that any self-respecting manager would refuse in an instant if it didn’t come with a LaChapelle name tag. This formidable reputation gives LaChapelle free rein to unleash his gloriously expansive vision, shooting Lil’ Kim naked except for Louis Vuitton logos splashed over her body, Paris Hilton in a split-to-the-navel purple cat-suit, Cameron Diaz as a giant voyeur peering into a dollhouse bathroom… no one else could pull off such gratuitous nudity and hyper-exaggerated glamour with such panache, but LaChapelle certainly can, and looks unlikely to stop anytime soon.

This retrospective rounds up some of LaChapelle’s most interesting and varied work, and proves, judging by the expressions of my fellow exhibition-goers, that whether you love or hate the flamboyant style of this master-photographer, you cannot fail to be fascinated by it.  Don’t miss it!