Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989)
Mapplethorpe was born New York. He studied painting and sculpture and received his B.F.A. at the Pratt Institute. In order to create images for collages of men, Mapplethorpe turned to photography, working as a staff photographer for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. He photographed socialites and celebrities such as John Paul Getty III and Carolina Herrera.
Mapplethorpe’s diverse work—homoerotic images, floral still lifes, pictures of children, commissioned portraits, mixed-media sculpture—is united by the constancy of his approach and technique. The surfaces of his prints offer a seemingly endless gradation of blacks and whites, shadow and light, and regardless of subject, his images are both elegant and provocative.
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