Artist field note

Robert Mapplethorpe

Classical control meets subjects polite culture tried to exclude.

Appears inPhotography

02 / 05

Ken Moody and Robert Sherman

1984

Two shaved heads become a formal study of black and white, profile and symmetry - without losing the people pictured.

The five in one idea

Mapplethorpe forced formal beauty and sexual politics into the same frame, then refused to let either cancel the other.