Robert Mapplethorpe Video Notes

• Born in New York in 1946 and died of aids in 1989.
• Went to the Pratt institution of Art where he met Patti Smith, they lived together she was a life long friend .
• Known for his portraits ( mostly black&white) on many album covers etc.
• Documented Manhattans Gay
  
  
  community which he was  a part of, this work was seen as controversial
• Questions frequently asked ; is it pornography or art? did he do it to shock?
• Born catholic so only came out as gay to his mother
• Took flower pictures only to get money and flower photos are the 2nd best seller
• His portraits were simple with good lighting
• Mostly photographed the rich and famous

• his work challenges the limits of acceptability
• He did it for selfish reasons as he wanted to see it not to shock
• He is the one who selects the photographs not the client who pays for them
• Clients do not get to see the contact sheets only the shots which he pics
• When he got his nipple pierced he got it filmed by Sandy Pally.
• Lived in suburban america which was a safe environment with no excitement
• At 16 he started art school training and moved to Brooklyn
• Patti Smith & Robert lived together during the 70's 
• Wasn't self destructive but exploratoive . Always positive
• Naive, started with portraits, still lives and sexuality
• Religion only slightly affects his life
• Uses his friends for his work
• Famous for his controversial sexual photos 
• He retains feeling of watching porn when he captures his pictures
• He captured aggressive sexuality pictures
• He knew what the audience wanted to see
• He led the community and his work reflected it
• Robert never victimised people, only captured what was already out there.
• John Miltion - Society has the right to look at everything in society, the people in his photographs were his friends they trusted him
• His work is a statement of the time we live in and our priorities 

Work Diary - Mapplethorpe Studio

In this session, we were continuing with our Mapplethorpe inspired work, i thought that this session was a lot harder because we were using a camera on a stand and i found it difficult adjusting the camera so it was in the right position and it was also hard finding different ideas to take photographs. 

This is one of my photographs from this session and this picture of Molly shows me how my work needs to be improved, it may be an up close shot but the orientation of it cuts out the hair so if the camera was portrait then it would have better composition. 

 This photograph of Chloe i feel is more similar to Mapplethorpe's work as she has got  a very simple facial expression and although i like the photograph there is a lot of excess background on the left and upper parts of the photograph.

Progression - If i was to re-do this session i would try and use more models in order to gain a wider variety of images which relate to Mapplethorpe's work, i would also work on my composition as i feel it still needs some more work. This is one of Mapplethorpe's photographs, he is using two models and he is contrasting their skin against each other and the back ground. I would like to use more than one model in my work as i feel that Mapplethorpe's use of two models has a greater effect than just one. 

Work Diary - Mapplethorpe Location

    In this session we were taking photographs which are inspired by Mapplethorpes portraiture, at first i thought this would be quite a simple task as his photographs look quite simple but when you look at many of Mapplethorpes' photographs you will see that his composition is good and that he does not have an excess border around his photographs.

These are two photographs in which i took which are similar to one of Mapplethorpes', in the top one you can see some of the white plastic which no longer creates a simplistic photograph with good composition, so when i re-took the photograph i made sure that it was just the orange background in the shot. 

This is another one of the photographs which i took, i feel that it is similar to some of Mapplethorpe's work as it captures a simple expression on Molly's face whilst also capturing some of the background. If i was to improve this photograph i would make it portrait instead of landscape as it would capture the end of Molly's hair instead of cutting it off.

Progression - If i was to re-do this session i would make sure that all the photo's i took would have good composition and i would try and capture some more photographs against different backgrounds so it makes the image look more interesting. This is one of Mapplethorpe's self portraits but instead of using a plain background he has got a star behind him. I feel that this makes the photograph more interesting so i would like to use different backgrounds in my work. 

Straight Images - Mapplethorpe Location

Straight Images - Mapplethorpe Studio

Image Bank - Robert Mapplethorpe Portraits

I feel that these 6 images represent Mapplethorpe's portraiture work extremely well. The models in the photographs are all the main focus and as the photographs are in black and white it empathises the form of the models. The first two only have a small segment of the models in which shows a good composition. This is an element in which i would like to use when taking my photographs as i feel it creates and effective look.