Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpewas an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth4 November 1946
CountryUnited States of America
Robert Mapplethorpe quotes about
To make pictures big is to make them more powerful
If I am at a party, I want to be at the party. Too many photographers use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers.
I don't like that particular word 'shocking.' I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before … I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.
When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist.
Beauty and the devil are the same thing.
If I had been born one or two hundred years ago, I might have been a sculptor, but photography is a very quick way to see, to make sculpture.
I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars.
You're never going to get anywhere in life if you don't live up to your obligations.
With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.
My work is about seeing - seeing things like they haven't been seen before.
I would never have done what I'd done if I'd considered my father as somebody I wanted to please
I recorded that because it happened to me. I wasn't making a point
I don't think any collector knows his true motivation.
I became the toast of London. A lot of people I met came from these really decadent families where the married men were gay and no one thought anything about it.