Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 1/12/00 9:44 pm, Robert Browne at rbrowne@iopener.net wrote: > Jim Brick wrote: > > I have seen this book in a bookstore. The subject matter is disgusting but > Mapplethorpe certainly was a good photographic artist and technician. Too > bad it was wasted on such demented and vulgar subject matter. > > Jim, > > I think you're being too kind to Mapplethorpe. After seeing the scope of his > work over the years my opinion is that he was only a mediocre photographer and > technician. What made him the darling of the art world was his more > controversial subject matter. I made a similar comment to my wife when we were > at an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently that included a > couple of his photos. Another viewer standing nearby agreed. So I guess at > least one other person shares my opinion. > > Robert I'd say... very good technician, very competent and talented but ultimately mediocre photographer... despite or more probably because of a subject matter that got him a huge amount of publicity/notoriety/exposure/respect/kudos/whatever precisely because it offended a lot of people. It didn't offend me (you have to try harder than THAT -- check the movies next time you stay in a chain motel), but I do find it pretty boring (like the movies). If you're going to make those images you better have a point but I never felt that behind the shock there really was one. There was a lot of white noise about the context of AIDS etc but a gay friend of mine who bought some Mapplethorpe monograph grinned when I made some comment about not really getting what all the fuss was about and said conspiratorially 'very high quality gay porn'. And it all made a strange kind of sense after that. - -- Johnny Deadman http://www.pinkheadedbug.com