Mapplethorpe, 1 of 3
Photos of Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. Photos by Robert Mapplethorpe and others.
Photo by Gerard Malanga:
(Click on the images if you wish to view them individually or larger.)
Photos by Norman Seeff:
The cover photo to Patti Smith’s Memoir “Just Kids”:
Photo by Kate Simon 1977:
Photos by Robert Mapplethorpe:
“She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah”
- by Leonard Cohen from his song “Hallelujah” (1984)
© All rights reserved by the respective artists.
Robert Mapplethorpe on Wikipedia
m a p p l e t h o r p e . o r g
Parts 2 & 3 of this post series are here:
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Most Recent Artworks All the Artists’ Artworks Index my43things
I really try to avoid putting comments with images because I don’t want to narrow the many diverse things the raw images can be to different people. But I am adding this comment here, for only those who are interested enough in this post to investigate its comments. I love in the first photograph how it appears to me that he is lost in her. If you didn’t notice this at first glance: it appears they’re out on a fire escape (not the safest place in the world), yet his feet are literally not touching the ground.
I really loved your poetic and profound definition of the first photo .. Istill had not looked by this way.
Now I looked again from this perspective .. gives to melt.
Amazing image!
And images!
And “Horses;” how many hundreds and hundreds of hours I spent listening to this.
bruce, thank you for your lovely comment
i loved your pics of pattie smith, im 60s guy, but cought up with her, wonderfull poetry, and horses was just amazzzin!
your photographyis buitifull, the black and wight, is just that,i just like the relaxed but stuning affect, you got with pattie pic, horses,
absolutly,casual, and impactictive, her self is too, (im glad she continues, too herself, her art)
thanks anyway,ok, n
I’ve always thought he was a brilliant photographer. I remember working in a library when I was a teenager and coming across a book of his work and, you know, at first I was like “oh man, look at those!” and then I really started enjoying the work as art. After, you know, a month or two
But these are really incredible. All of them. Thanks for posting them!
THanx for this website, hope you keep on uploading pictures about it. I find it very interesting. I am studying about Culture Management and in one subject I have to watch the documentary Dirty Pictures of Mapplethorpe. So, I found you and this web with its pictures. I´m glad to find out he was Patti´s Friend
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OneMoreOption: Thank you, and I appreciate the feedback.
OMG she was sooo incredibly gorgeous and strong!!
Patti Smith was incredibly ugly but incredibly wantable
and in one swoop, you become both ugly and not the other either.
Anyone paying attention.. Ever seen Patti interviewed? she’s like the sweet little kid in yr neighborhood when you were growing up, (and you wondered how she’d develope into a woman)
(with all kinds of big time smarts & Soul)
Geez man, I know yr ‘just bein honest”
not nice tho, to people who love her
@ “Gary”
3:20 PM CST
…Remind me to pass this onto Patti…
666
12/5/09
color photography and digital photography will never supercede organic black and white photography the same thing with hollywood and special effects… great writing and great acting etc wipes that out. you can´t buy or genetically engineer greatness.
i will die on that principle. if they engineered 900 ft tall basketball players, would the game be any better?
this is OUR life and lets live it with as much love and intelligence as we can bring.
fuck the NWO. KMA…
@ “rik thomas”
10:40 PM CST
Quote :
…”color photography and digital photography will never supercede organic black and white photography…”
…Never thought of silver nitrates or the halides as “organic”; not sure this is a strong premise to seat your otherwise cogent (if not syntax-challenged) points of view.
I am always loath to criticize too harshly the shortcomings of the digital self-indulgences I’ve seen here and all over the Internet. While I don’t like to discourage creativity, the generations that succeeded mine couldn’t tell a Minor White print from a Fellini film. You have to bear in mind that generations X,Y & Z will NEVER have access to say, for example, Agfa Brovira #6 paper because 1) it’s not made anymore and 2) the company that made it has been split so many times it no longer exists either, for all intents and purposes.
This should bring you up to speed on what constitutes “art” today.
There’s no hole to put your thumb in the dike; the waters of digital mimicry and photoshop constructs saturating the Internet with pretentions to “art” have already flooded the valley and swept up the village.
As as artist myself, I find it amusing when some 12 year old computer geek can point & shoot his digital, or even drop his digital on the floor and produce an “image” of sorts, publish it on the Internet, and voila…before he turns age 13, he can get away with calling him/herself a “photographer”.
If you’re a pro, they’re pretty easy to spot.
“Special effects” is another animal, as is the art of making great films. While I don’t regard Spielberg’s “Close Encounters” as a “great film”, the point of the film was not special effects, it was “first contact”. His “A.I.” was far superior to anything he’s ever done. Same can be said for what I consider better made films that are heavy on SE; such as Blade Runner, 2010 (I wasn’t that crazy about 2001, like everybody else was), or “Dark City”; all six of these films depended heavily on “special effects”.
If you know your 101 art history, photography buried etching and engraving; early 20th century “Modernism” damn well came close to burying anything resembling the academic art of the past four centuries. And now the “digital” format has buried photography.
The only thing that will bury the “digital” age from this point on will be nanobot chips planted in our brain that can project at will three dimensional trans-mutable holographic imagery that we can physically “interact” with…when the ole lady’s not a home.
Would that we should live so long.
In a word, we are now at an evolutionary crossroads where the question, “What is art ?”… has become moot. In say, 500 to 1000 years, art will have become an archeological relic.
Any more questions about photography ?
J.B.
1/6/10
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omo:
I guess one thing I’d add to these kinds of debates is: If a person thinks one thing is better than another or easier than another, then they should try to create an example to demonstrate their point. I think appreciation grows from attempting to create the kinds of artworks a person critiques.
Never easier = Always better
I have loved Patti Smith since “Society’s Child”. Thank you for these photos. And thank you Mr. Maplethorpe, wherever you are for luring me into photography in the 1960′s. RE: the never-ending conflict over digital versus darkroom photography, they both have much to offer, but the thrill of watching an image appear on a piece of paper, the gasp, the acceleration of the heartbeat will never be topped.
Society’s Child was sung by Janis Ian when she was fourteen, living in NYC. This was before Patti Smith’s time in the sun, some years later. The one has little to do with the other.
ps: I have always thought of Patti Smith as nothing more than purely beautiful.
@ “Bill Fisher”
2: 15 PM CST
Re: “Society’s Child”
You mean Janis Ian don’t you ? Give credit where credit is due.
Quote :
…”ps: I have always thought of Patti Smith as nothing more than purely beautiful.”…
…remind me to pass this onto Patti…
…oh wait…I already said that…so who goes first…you…or “Gary”…??…
The Saint
1/12/10
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omo: James,
As I believe Julie Andrews’ character in The Sound Of Music, Maria, implied upon meeting one of her new charges: you are incorrigible.
Kurt: “What is incorrigible?”
Maria: “I think it means that you want to be treated like a boy.”
An aside about Ms. Ian, sure she came on phenomenally (if that’s a word) in the sixties well before she was 20 with
a ‘rebellious” great song getting interracial love out there on America’s table.
These days she’s freely out, and a fine “rebellious” player in the lesbian/gay rights battle consciousness.
BUT, I witnessed an outrageous & offensive interview with her somewhere them days & these days/
An interviewer asked her about Dylan’s recent Christian conversion (what was this, the 80s? Slow Train Coming)
She visually bucked with distain, and angrily chided him for (I think she might have used the word ‘traitor’)
another new shift in consciousness, away from the important one he was born with.
Christ I hated her immediatly, for her “rebelliousness”.
OMO :
6:00 PM CST
…I’ll take Joni Mitchell over “Sound of Music”, hands down :
“…He keeps referring back to school days
And clinging to his child
Fidgeting and bullied
His crazy wisdom holding onto something wild
He asked me to be patient
Well I failed
“Grow up!” I cried
And as the smoke was clearing he said
“Give me one good reason why”
What a strange strange boy
He sees the cars as sets of waves
Sequences of mass and space
He sees the damage in my face…”
“A Strange Boy”
1976
from The Saint
1/12/10
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omo: That’s lovely. Well versed.
To James Ballard:
Oh my god! How could I have done that? Of course “Society’s Child” was Janis Ian. And I haven’t smoked a joint in at least….uhhhhhh…..well I uhhhhhh…..mmmmmmm….wellIgottagonowbye!
@ “Bill”
8:50 PM CST
…Those were the days; the days that most of the present generation can barely comprehend…then again, they will say the same about us. Vanity is a closed bubble; hard to see into when yer always look’in from within…Now where’s Joni Mitchell’s agent and why he ain’t called me yet? My sellfone’s grow’in ivy own it…
The Saint
1/12/10
Wow that sure does bring back memories ! I remember those days, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix , Cream , they were all new faces on the world stage. I live in Amelia Island Florida and this is a little place and a lot of us wanted to go to the west cost. that is where it was happening. It feels good to revisit some of that. As I look at the pictures it reminds me of those days. Glad you put it up there. Thanks.
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OneMoreOption: Thank you.
Y’all might enjoy Patti’s latest book, chances are, if yr on this page
“Just Kids”, all about the days she loved Mr. Mapplethorpe
http://namelessneed.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/sam-shepardpatti-smith-books-report/
Hi,
I am also reading the book by Patti Smith “Just Kids”, and it surprised me. How good, how interesing, how full of feelings.
I love these pictures you posted in the blog.
I also would like to ask you some technical questons about your blog. Could we do it privatly? (it would be quite an off-topic…) Would you be so kind to send me an e-mail?
Ciao
Maria Paola
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OneMoreOption: Anyone can email me at snoopy_jump (at) yahoo.com
I’ve always thought he was a brilliant photographer. I remember working in a library when I was a teenager and coming across a book of his work and, you know, at first I was like “oh man, look at those!” and then I really started enjoying the work as art. After, you know, a month or two
But these are really incredible. All of them. Thanks for posting them!
Patti Smith is a rare gift. I’ve never seen a performer who can stir up so many emotions the way she can. Robert Mapplethorpe also did the same thing with his photography. True artists in every sense of the word.
He does look lost in her in the first photo, very much so.
good………………