Mapplethorpe had got to know Colin Tennant (Lord Glenconner) in March 1976 when he was sent by `Interview? magazine to photograph the guests at Tennant's 50th birthday party. Mapplethorpe later photographed his son, Charles, in London. Here he is depicted as the epitome of cool, with his ruffled hair and aviator sunglasses shielding him from the bright lights which reflect off the painted door behind him.
Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946 - 1989)
The American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe became famous, not to say, notorious, in the 1970s and 1980s for his photographs of the male nude and sexually explicit, gay imagery. Although often considered controversial, Mapplethorpe tested the right to individual freedom of expression. These images were not meant to be titillating or obscene but beautiful in a traditionally classical way. His work, therefore, holds a significant place in the history of artistic struggle to depict the world as it is, with honesty and truth. His nudes, when considered alongside his portraits of children and flower photographs, show him to be overwhelmingly interested in the beauty and transience of life. Mapplethorpe, even when facing death from AIDS, affirmed the beauty of the here and now.
