About this artwork
This photograph, with the artist posed in drag, was featured on the back cover of the 1985 book 'Certain People: A Book of Portraits'. In this self portrait, the artist blurs his gender and sexual identity by appearing in partial drag, his face dramatically made-up. Juxtaposing this image with self portraits of more traditionally masculine personas Mapplethorpe questions established notions of male and female, revealing their status as socially constructed terms. Concluding her essay in 'Certain People' Susan Sontag states: "I once asked Mapplethorpe what he does with himself when he poses for the camera, and he replied that he tries to find that part of himself that is self-confident."
Updated before 2020
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artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
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title:Self Portrait
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date created:1980; printed 2009
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materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
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measurements:35.20 x 35.00 cm; framed: 68.40 x 66.20 x 3.10 cm
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object type:
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credit line:ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Lent by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation 2014
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accession number:AL00389
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gallery:
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subject:
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
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...
