Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (/ˈmeɪpəlˌθɔːrp/ MAY-pəl-thorp; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Mapplethorpe is said to have drawn inspiration from George Dureau, an American black and white photographer ten years his senior, who composed shots of fully nude African American and disabled men, in his home city of New Orleans.

Mapplethorpe's 1989 exhibition, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.

Mapplethorpe was born in the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens, New York City, the son of Joan Dorothy (Maxey) and Harry Irving Mapplethorpe, an electrical engineer. He was of English, Irish, and German descent, and grew up as a Catholic at Our Lady of the Snows Parish. Mapplethorpe attended Martin Van Buren High School, where he graduated in 1963.

He had three brothers and two sisters. One of his brothers, Edward, later worked for him as an assistant and became a photographer as well. He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in Graphic Arts. He dropped out in 1969 before finishing his degree.

Mapplethorpe lived with his girlfriend, the artist and musician Patti Smith, from 1967 to 1972, and she supported him by working in bookstores. They created art together, and maintained a close friendship throughout Mapplethorpe's life. In the late 1960s or early 1970s, Mapplethorpe took his first photographs using a Polaroid camera. He designed and sold his own jewelry, which was worn by Warhol superstar, Joe Dallesandro. During this period Mapplethorpe also produced drawings, collages, and found object sculptures.

In 1972, Mapplethorpe met art curator Sam Wagstaff, who became his mentor, lover, patron, and lifetime companion. In the mid-1970s, Wagstaff acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and Mapplethorpe began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. During this time, he became friends with New Orleans artist George Dureau, whose work had such a profound impact on Mapplethorpe that he restaged many of Dureau's early photographs.

From 1977 until 1980, Mapplethorpe was the lover of writer and Drummer editor Jack Fritscher, who introduced him to the Mineshaft, a members-only BDSM gay leather bar and sex club in Manhattan. Mapplethorpe took many pictures of the Mineshaft, and was at one point its official photographer (... "After dinner I go to the Mineshaft.")