Robert Mapplethorpe: one of the most controversial of recent photographer artists

Robert Mapplethorpe
Originally uploaded by Supercilious

Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and naked men.

The frank, homosexual eroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks, says Wikipedia.

Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic of English and Irish heritage in Our Lady of the Snows Parish in Floral Park, New York, a neighborhood of Long Island. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts.[1]

In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities.

In 2006, a Mapplethorpe print of Andy Warhol was auctioned for $643,200, making it the 6th most expensive photograph ever sold.