Robert Mapplethorpe - Extended Video Notes

• Born in 1946, died of AIDS in 1989
• Lived in New York City (suburban America) and was brought up a Catholic
• He wasn't religious but had a Catholic way of arranging objects
• Moved to Brooklyn because he didn't like the calmness of the suburbs
• Went to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he studied Graphic Arts
• Known for his portraits (black and white), used on album covers

• Mostly documented Manhattan's gay community and his work was sometimes seen as pornography
• He didn't set out to shock, his work was what he personally thought would work well as portraits
• The contents of his work are provocative and controversial but the quality is still incredibly high
• Some say his work has merged the lines of what's acceptable and of what's not
• His work has a cool, distant way of taking portraits but it's still so intimate and personal

• He always liked to explore and was always positive towards his work
• Experimented with steel knives for lighting
• Famous for his opposition concerning sex
• Captured sexual violence - the public did not know why it was sexual, there was a certain sexual atmosphere in his work but violence was portrayed very clearly
• Nothing in his pictures were setup or new to us, it was already happening outside in the world; he was only capturing these in his pictures
• He photographed the life he lived and his work was a statement of the time he lived in