David LaChapelle
Will the Earth End in Fire, Will the Earth End in Ice, 2025
Pigment print
50x66 inches
Over the past three decades, David LaChapelle has explored the evolving relationship between nature and civilization through elaborate still-life photographs, often using meticulously crafted sets. His earlier series, Seismic Shift (2012), which depicted prized artworks submerged in floodwaters, and Aristocracy (2014), featuring abandoned private jets, imagined symbols of exclusivity and luxury undone by natural or societal forces.
By 2014, LaChapelle deepened this exploration in Gas, imagining overgrown forests reclaiming forgotten gas stations, scenes that hinted at nature’s quiet resistance to industrial progress. This theme would later reemerge in his project Spree, conceived in the summer of 2019, which centers on a towering cruise ship mysteriously frozen within an icy, nighttime seascape.
As he began developing Spree, LaChapelle drew loose inspiration from historical accounts of Shackleton’s ill-fated Trans-Antarctic expedition. These narratives of human ambition stalled by nature resonated with his vision of a modern vessel…once a symbol of escapist luxury, now immobilized in a frozen wilderness. At the same time, he became increasingly intrigued by the cruise industry itself: its rapid growth, its role in the global economy, and its promise of leisure on a grand scale. In July 2019, he began building a 35-centimeter model of the ship in his Los Angeles studio.
By early 2020, Spree was nearing completion. The cruise industry was at its peak, generating over $35 billion annually with an estimated 32 million passengers expected to sail that year. But just as LaChapelle finalized the set in February, real-world events began to mirror his imagined one. The artwork was completed on March 9, 2020.
Ten days later, Los Angeles entered lockdown. One month after that, the CDC issued a no-sail order for all cruises in U.S. waters. Massive, empty cruise ships—including the Brilliance of the Seas, now anchored off the coast of Florida—were suspended offshore, eerily echoing LaChapelle’s fictional frozen vessel.
In 2025, LaChapelle returned to this frozen world, revisiting the same protagonist in a new companion work titled Will the World End in Fire, Will the World End in Ice. In this new perspective, the cruise ship remains trapped in ice, but now it’s captured the brightness of a haunting sun, adding a new dimension to his ongoing meditation on humanity, excess, and the quiet power of nature.
By 2014, LaChapelle deepened this exploration in Gas, imagining overgrown forests reclaiming forgotten gas stations, scenes that hinted at nature’s quiet resistance to industrial progress. This theme would later reemerge in his project Spree, conceived in the summer of 2019, which centers on a towering cruise ship mysteriously frozen within an icy, nighttime seascape.
As he began developing Spree, LaChapelle drew loose inspiration from historical accounts of Shackleton’s ill-fated Trans-Antarctic expedition. These narratives of human ambition stalled by nature resonated with his vision of a modern vessel…once a symbol of escapist luxury, now immobilized in a frozen wilderness. At the same time, he became increasingly intrigued by the cruise industry itself: its rapid growth, its role in the global economy, and its promise of leisure on a grand scale. In July 2019, he began building a 35-centimeter model of the ship in his Los Angeles studio.
By early 2020, Spree was nearing completion. The cruise industry was at its peak, generating over $35 billion annually with an estimated 32 million passengers expected to sail that year. But just as LaChapelle finalized the set in February, real-world events began to mirror his imagined one. The artwork was completed on March 9, 2020.
Ten days later, Los Angeles entered lockdown. One month after that, the CDC issued a no-sail order for all cruises in U.S. waters. Massive, empty cruise ships—including the Brilliance of the Seas, now anchored off the coast of Florida—were suspended offshore, eerily echoing LaChapelle’s fictional frozen vessel.
In 2025, LaChapelle returned to this frozen world, revisiting the same protagonist in a new companion work titled Will the World End in Fire, Will the World End in Ice. In this new perspective, the cruise ship remains trapped in ice, but now it’s captured the brightness of a haunting sun, adding a new dimension to his ongoing meditation on humanity, excess, and the quiet power of nature.
DLC019/2025