Controversial artist Robert Mapplethorpe is the latest queer pioneer to have a biopic made about their life. The American photographer became recognisable for his gritty captures of BDSM subculture, along with his portraits of celebrities.
Mapplethorpe worked initially with polaroids, until his mentor and ‘lifetime companion’ Sam Wagstaff introduced him to a medium-format camera, which enabled Mapplethorpe to capture the ‘somebody’s of the 70s. He later moved on to nudes and flower stills, before he died at just 42 from a complication of AIDS, in 1989.
Rferring to his own work as pornographic, it wasn’t until the late 80s that his erotic subjects became subject to such controversy, most namely his tour The Perfect Moment (which portrayed some images too NSFW for us to include in the gallery below, like a self-portrait of Mapplethorpe insert a bullwhip into himself).
Wiki writes: “Mapplethorpe was a participant observer for much of his erotic photography, participating in the sexual acts which he was photographing and engaging his models sexually”. Well, maybe the 70s would call a ‘participant observer’, the 2010s would probably call it sexual assault.