Fashion photographer David LaChapelle quits NY for The Good Life

After spending two decades working at the core of the fashion industry in N.Y, the shutterbug clearly decided a change of pace was due, and this week let journalists at US newspaper the Wall Street Journal into his new home for the first time. The five-bedroom house is a far cry from his former glamorous life in the Big Apple, but possibly just as surreal. A plantation-style building, it is completely solar-powered, and wood-louvered doors recycled from an old hotel make up the sides of the home. Rain provides the water supply, goats provide milk and fertilizer and frogs have been installed to catch mosquitoes! There’s also a waste, vegetable and bio-diesel refinery and, in true LaChapelle style, a Mercedes painted in pink camouflage that runs on vegetable oil.

Talking about his move the move the photographer told WSJ, “I love glamour, I love fashion. But when that’s the sole purpose it becomes very limiting,” He was even considering giving it all up to become a farmer when he came across the colony while snapping an ad campaign. Thankfully for LaChapelle fans he didn't and the move seems to have given one of the world’s most unique creative forces a whole new lease of life - even inspiring some new work and pictures.

Click here to see pictures of David LaChapelle's new home on WSJ.