Robert Mapplethorpe’s Flowers

"I played around with the flowers and the lighting, so that was a good way to educate myself."

— Robert Mapplethorpe

(Robert Mapplethorpe's Flowers - dans le gris)

Self Portrait, 1974, Polaroid

(Robert Mapplethorpe's Flowers - dans le gris)

Robert Mapplethorpe was born November 4, 1946, in Floral Park, New York. He left home in 1962 and enrolled at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 1963, where he studied painting and sculpture and received his B.F.A. Mapplethorpe was originally trained as a painter before taking an interest in photography. Mapplethorpe turned to photography, starting with the Polaroid SX-70. From 1972 onwards, photography became his primary medium. Mapplethorpe is interested in portraits, Mapplethorpe worked as a photographer with Andy Warhol's Interview magazine.

Throughout the 1980s, Robert Mapplethorpe produced images that simultaneously challenge and adhere to classical aesthetic standards: stylized compositions of male and female nudes, delicate flowers and still lifes, studio portraits of artists and celebrities, to name a few of his preferred genres. Mapplethorpe introduced and refined different techniques and formats, including color 20 x 24 inch Polaroids, photogravures, platinum prints on paper and linen, Cibachrome and dye transfer color prints.

Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most influential and controversial photographers of the 20th century. While his content could be shocking, Mapplethorpe was also highly attuned to his medium’s formal, more traditional elements; his pictures are deeply concerned with composition, color, texture, balance, and beauty. Mapplethorpe is also acclaimed for his sexualized close-ups of the anatomy of flora. For his ‘portraits’ of flowers, Mapplethorpe often chose lilies, orchids and tulips whose fleshy petals suggest the texture of human skin. Captured in exquisite detail, Mapplethorpe used photography to preserve their ephemeral and fleeting beauty. Yet it wasn't just the practicality of flower photography that attracted Mapplethorpe to the subject. A casual onlooker might see his black-and-white lilies, orchids and tulips as a kind of visual palette cleanser, placed in between the earthier subjects.

(Robert Mapplethorpe's Flowers - dans le gris)