Mapplethorpe Would Have Dug Digital
When visiting New York City this past weekend to check out a July 4th Yankees/Red Sox Game, I had the opportunity to see “Polaroids: Mapplethorpe” at the Whitney Museum of Art (on view until September 7, 2008).
While shooting Polaroids to keep a record of his artwork in the 1970s, Robert Mapplethorpe fell in love with the Polaroids’ immediacy and pretty soon, he began to experiment and hobby around with the medium. In fact, many of these instant photos have never been seen, overshadowed by his later, more precise work.
The result was thousands of photos of the young man’s friends and lovers and even common everyday objects. The exhibit, which showcase more than 100 shots, one right after the next, highlights the nature of Mapplethorpe’s experimentation with framing, lighting, angles and finding beauty in the everyday. These photos, taken from 1970-1975, were his tutorials, in essence, preparing him for the medium-format Hasselblad he would get as a gift a few years later. Ultimately, he would alienate the immediacy of the Polaroid for the crisp, sharp quality of a pro camera.
Here’s what the New Yorker magazine said about the exhibit:
“Many of these small, intimate photographs convey tenderness and vulnerability. Others depict a toughness and immediacy that would give way in later years to more classical form. Unlike the highly crafted images Mapplethorpe staged in the studio and became famous for, these disarming pictures are marked by spontaneity and invention. Together, they offer insight into the artist’s creative development and reveal his pure delight in seeing at a formative time in his career.”
The show is accompanied by a book that places this early work in the context of his life-long artistic production.
Perhaps some of the spontaniety and fun he saw in his earlier photo days was lost with the Hasselblad. It’s too bad Mapplethorpe died young from AIDS in 1989 and never lived to use the digital cameras of today, where immediacy does not mean sacrificing quality.
