I really like Robert Mapplethorpe's work, specifically the photographs in which he focuses on flowers. I am extremely intrigued by them, they are so simple yet so effective and interesting all at the same time, even though they are pretty simple photographs of flowers. Below are some of Mapplethorpe's photos:
Like I said, I really like these photos, I think it is partly to do with the contrast of colours or the fact they are black and white, the flowers are set off by the background making them all the more striking than if they had been photographed outdoors in their natural environment, the fact that they have been moved and placed somewhere they should not necessarily be makes the concept all the more interesting.
Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946, in 1963 he enrolled at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, near his home town. Here he studied drawing, painting and sculpture, he was influenced by artists such as Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. It was here that he got his first Polaroid camera in 1970, this is when he began taking his own photographs to include within the collages he was producing, he did this as he felt that the work was more meaningful and true to himself as all of the photographs he was using were his own. He enjoyed taking photographs using his Polaroid camera, Mapplethorpe had his first exhibition in 1973 at the Light Gallery in New York the exhibition was called "Polaroids". Two years after this he started using a Hasselblad medium format camera, he then started photographing a wider variety of things within his circle of friends, things such as artists and musicians. As well as this he also started to work on commercial projects of which he produced cover art for an artist, worked in television and produced a series of portraits and party pictured for Interview magazine. He went on to produce more exhibition pieces, as well as venturing into different areas with his photography.
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