Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]
on 2/12/00 10:44 AM, Robert Browne at rbrowne@iopener.net 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.
I agree - for the most part. I did see some of his platinum prints of Greek
sculpture which were exquisite and the flower photos were strangely
interesting. The S&M and gay porn I can do without, voyeurism of the worst
kind and all a bit on the clinical side for me, but I don't think it is any
more or less artistic than a lot of the celebrity portraiture and hetero
porn that passes for art and clamours for our attention. Graphically
striking yet lacking any warmth or beauty besides the technical excellence
of the photographic process: it is all eye candy to someone or other but
hardly edifying IME. But then neither is 99% of TV, literature or mass
culture and I am not going to make it my life's work to purge the world of
that: 'we are all of us lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at
the stars' as a certain berated 19th century homosexual I admire (whose
death was perhaps a greater loss) put it, more or less...
OTOH I like Mr M's onetime girlfriend's music: though the cover shots he did
for dear Patti are nothing to stick up at MOMA IMHO.
- --
Adrian Bradshaw
Corporate and Editorial Photography
Beijing, China
tel/fax +86 10 6532 5112
mobile +86 139 108 22292
e-mail apbbeijing@yahoo.com
OR adrianpeterbradshaw@compuserve.com
website: http://www.apbphoto.com
http://www.liaisonintl.com/bradshaw.htm
http://www.liaisonintl.com/bradshaw_e.htm
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com