Robert Mapplethorpe - Mapplethorpe Polaroids - 2023

New sealed (the photos are from another specimen in my possession)
Black-and-white Polaroid photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe from the seventies – a medium of expression through which the artist defined the style that would earn him international fame – are gathered in this new pocket edition. Admired by critics for his photographs with refined modeling and classical composition, Robert Mapplethorpe remains a figure at once extremely controversial and hugely popular. The volume brings together nearly 300 images from the archive of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and private collections, offering a critical look at the artist's formative years and revealing the themes that would inspire his entire career. It also includes a selection of color Polaroids and objects that incorporate his early experiments with the photography "instantanea". Some images convey disarming tenderness and vulnerability, while others a hardness and immediacy that, in the years that followed, would yield to more classical forms. The author traces the evolution of Mapplethorpe's use of instant photography over five years, from 1970 to 1975, a period in which the artist devoted himself predominantly to this technique. The collection includes self-portraits, figure studies, still lifes, portraits of lovers and friends – including Patti Smith, Sam Wagstaff and Marianne Faithfull – and observations of everyday objects. Characterized by spontaneity and creative curiosity, these delicate images offer an illuminating contrast to the polished perfection of the works for which Mapplethorpe is best known, giving us a more intimate and personal view of his art.