Pistils /
Robert Mapplethorpe began taking photographs in the 1970s with a Polaroid camera given to him by a friend. When he died in 1989 of AIDS, at the age of forty-two, he was considered one of the most important photographers of his generation, having gained a reputation as the avatar of a rigorous formal...
| Other Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Manuscript |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Random House,
[1996]
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Contributor biographical information Publisher description |
| Summary: | Robert Mapplethorpe began taking photographs in the 1970s with a Polaroid camera given to him by a friend. When he died in 1989 of AIDS, at the age of forty-two, he was considered one of the most important photographers of his generation, having gained a reputation as the avatar of a rigorous formalism stunningly wed to graphic and sometimes controversial subject matter. Most of Robert Mapplethorpe's days began in the early afternoon, often by photographing flowers. Mapplethorpe used them to help focus his vision, centering and warming up for his commercial portrait work. The flowers also helped him to effect the transition to the more daring work, which he executed late at night. Pistils reproduces 120 of these ravishing images of flowers, many of which have never been published. The full range of Mapplethorpe's virtuosity is displayed here--early Polaroids: exacting still lifes in black-and-white and color; and extremely rare, toned gravure prints. Not since Georgia O'Keeffe has an artist looked at flowers with as developed an eye as Robert Mapplethorpe. In them he discovered sex, death, redemption, and, always, beauty. These photographs go far beyond decorative allure to place him firmly in the pantheon of the photographic masters. |
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| Item Description: | Issued in slipcase. The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy was acquired as part of The Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture. The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy is signed by Ashbery. |
| Physical Description: | 173 pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 32 cm |
| ISBN: | 0679408053 9780679408055 0517284367 9780517284360 |