Mounica Akula

Gallery:

http://www.mapplethorpe.org

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Robert Mapplethorpe, a highly stylized black and white photographer, was born in 1946 in Floral Park, Queens. In 1963, Mapplethorpe attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he studied drawing, painting, and sculpture. His main artistic influences were Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp and because of them, he experimented with various materials in mixed-media collages, including cutting images from books, etc. He began taking his own pictures with a Polaroid camera in 1970 so that he could use them in his collages. After two years, he bought a Hasselblad medium-format camera and taking pictures of almost anything and anyone. This included his circle of friends, artists, musicians, socialites, pornographic film stars, and members of the S & M underground. In the 70s, Mapplethorpe became interested in capturing New York's S & M scene. Later on during his time, his meeting Lisa Lyon became the reason why Mapplethorpe produced images that were stylized compositions of male and female nudes, In the 80s. His other genres included delicate flower still lifes, and studio portraits of artists and celebrities. In 1986, Mapplethorpe was diagnosed with AIDS. He died in 1989.