In 2006, while on a private tour of Rome’s Sistine Chapel, David LaChapelle—like Stendhal seeing Giotto’s frescoes in Florence for the first time—had an epiphany. The American photographer realised that something had to change. He left the Vatican City and took a self-imposed exile on a tropical island in the South Pacific, as far away from Western civilization as he could go, in order to find himself again. When he finally returned, he made ‘After The Deluge’: an epic, seven-metre photograph inspired by Michelangelo’s ‘The Deluge’, and this inspired a wave of post-apocalyptic, pop-biblical works that blend Catholic kitsch with dark, glamorous celebrity culture. It’s an extraordinary body of work—and one that couldn’t have been made by anybody else but David LaChapelle.

More information at: Beaux-Arts Mons