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Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 – 1989) was a controversial
American photographer. He studied art at the Pratt Institute at
Brooklyn. His first camera was a Polaroid, with which he took pictures
to create completely original collages from his own photographs. This
led Mapplethorpe into photography and in 1973, the Light Gallery in New
York presented his first exhibition entitled, “Polaroids”. He then
acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera, with which he photographed
his friends and acquaintances in his social world, which as well as
artists and musicians, also included people from far seedier social
scenes – hence the controversial nature of his work. Many of the
photographs were considered extremely shocking, yet technically they
were also rated as brilliant. During an interview with ARTnews in 1988,
he said that he was not out to shock, but was always looking for
something that he had never seen photographed before, was in a position
to take those pictures and felt obliged to take them. Mapplethorpe’s
career thrived and in 1978, the Robert Miller Gallery in New York became
his exclusive dealer. In the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe and Lisa Lyon,
the first World Women’s Bodybuilding Champion, together produced a
series of figure studies, portraits and a film, and published the book
Lady, Lisa Lyon.
During the 1980s, Mapplethorpe created stunningly lit
compositions of male and female nudes, striking images of flowers and
studio portraits of celebrities. He would take 100 or more shots at a
sitting, from which he would select perhaps only a handful and the rest
would not be shown, even to the sitter. He continually refined his
techniques, experimenting with various printing methods and although he
shot mostly in black and white, he also created large-format colour
Polaroids. In 1986, at the pinnacle of his career and receiving
commissions such as portraits of artists for a new book, 50 New York
Artists, he was diagnosed with AIDS. This simply spurred him on to
become even more creative and to accepting the most challenging
commissions. Robert Mapplethorpe died on 9 March 1989, and although
controversial, was one of the most important photographers of the
twentieth century.
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