Jesus Is My Homeboy Official Original

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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. 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?

I remembered when I was a boy, me and my brothers and a couple of my friends in Texas would go hunting with our fathers. They’d build a fire, and we’d sit around and the old men would tell stories. Around one of those campfires, my dad once told me, “Never let a man tie you up, ‘cause he can do anything to you once he ties you up. And if he got a gun on you, make him kill you before he ties you 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, 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.

When fashion and fine arts photographer David LaChapelle saw someone wearing a “Jesus is my Homeboy” T-shirt in 2003, he was touched by the simplicity of the message. It made him wonder who Jesus’ original homeboys (the twelve apostles) were—or rather, who they would have been had God chosen to incarnate himself in twenty-first-century America instead of in first-century Palestine. David LaChapelle’s Jesus is My Home Boy series reinterprets traditional religious scenes in contemporary settings. David LaChapelle’s preference for transcendent themes, such as the divine presence in everyday matters or the inevitable moment of our death, is well represented in

By purchasing the original prints and other products, you are helpingVan Zan to keep the “Jesus Is My Homeboy” Movement alive. If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! Essay Writing Service You may think you know all about “Jesus is My Homeboy”.You’ve seen the image on t-shirts, hats, and badges. It is the iconic design worn by celebrities too numerous to mention. You might be wearing a “Jesus is My Homeboy" shirt right now. It doesn’t matter. Unless you have already read this story and are reading it again from the beginning because it’s so amazing, you know almost NOTHING about “Jesus is My Homeboy”. 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.”

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I can tell you that one day in the late 1980s, I was at my mom’s house when this detective called. I thought it was a casting director, ‘cause I got calls over there like that all the time, and we were taught to answer them by saying our name really clearly. I answered the phone by saying, “Hello, this is Van Zan. Can I help you?” He was like, “Van Zan Frater?” I said, “Yeah.” Once everything had calmed down, I just kept thinking, ‘Jesus is my homeboy’ saved my life. I gotta do something with that. 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. 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.