Mapplethorpe Flora

Robert Mapplethorpe is one of the twentieth century’s most important artists, known for his ground-breaking and provocative work. He studied painting, drawing, and sculpture in Brooklyn in the 1960s and started taking photographs when he acquired a Polaroid camera, in 1970. Beginning in 1973 and until his death in 1989, Mapplethorpe explored the flower with extraordinary dedication, using a range of photographic processes – from Polaroids to dye-transfer color works.

In carefully constructed compositions, he captured roses, orchids, snapdragons, daisies, tulips and other species – both common and rare – and forever transformed the way we perceive a classic and familiar subject. The result – a stunning body of work – is collected in this elegant book, with a foreword by Mapplethorpe’s close friend Dimitri Levas and an introduction by Herbert Muschamp.