Robert Mapplethorpe - Mapplethorpe Polaroids - 2023

Brand new and sealed (the photos are from another specimen I own)
The black-and-white Polaroid photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe from the seventies – a medium through which the artist defined the style that would bring him international fame – are collected in this new pocket-sized edition. Praised by critics for his photographs with refined posing and classical composition, Robert Mapplethorpe remains a figure who is at once highly controversial and enormously popular.
The volume brings together nearly 300 images from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation archive and private collections, offering a critical look at the artist's formative years and revealing the themes that would inspire his entire career. A selection of color Polaroids and objects that incorporate his early experiments with the 'instant' photography is also included.
Some images convey a disarming tenderness and vulnerability, while others convey a hardness and immediacy that, in the years to come, 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 during 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.