Robert Mapplethorpe : The Black Book. Zur Ausstellung um NRW Forum Düsseldorf, 2010. Dtsch.-Engl.

ISBN-13: 9783829604604 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 108 str.

Ntozake Shange

Opis

A classic, indeed perhaps the best of the Mapplethorpe books. And for many most certainly the most typical Mapplethorpe, now available once again thanks to this re-edition. The Black Book, first published in 1986, presents 96 formally stringent and highly erotic nudes, all of them photographs of black men, either as full figures, or staged as details, as fragments of their bodies. Stylized as classical statues or provocatively in all their presence and sensuous radiance. Black-and-white photography was Mapplethorpe's preferred medium. And his obsessive aesthetics was based on completely mastering it, as this enabled him to visualize any number of tonal gradations and penetrate deep into the very pores of the gleaming black skin. It is a method that reached a climax in these images. The Black Book, Mapplethorpe s homage to the black male body, has always been one of the most important visual contributions to the discussion on beauty, sensuality, and sexuality in photography.

O autorze

Robert Mapplethorpe, geboren 1946, wurde ab Anfang der 1980er-Jahre von einem größeren Publikum wahrgenommen, zunächst vor allem in New York. Viele Persönlichkeiten ließen sich von ihm porträtieren, unter anderem Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, Paloma Picasso und Patti Smith. Es war geradezu in, sich von Mapplethorpe fotografieren zu lassen. Mapplethorpes Arbeiten wurden in den USA häufig in öffentlich finanzierten Ausstellungen gezeigt.