This weekend just past I finally made the trip down the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence system from Toronto to spend time Montréal. Among the things I did was see an acclaimed exhibition of the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Focus : Perfection at the Musée de beaux-arts de Montréal. Robert Everett-Green's September essay at Toronto's The Globe and Mail provides a good perspective on Mapplethorpe and his artistic career in all its complexities. I enjoyed it, not least because I learned things. That iconic 1978 photograph of an unimpressed Deborah Harry, leaning back with her elbows against a wall, was his work.
(I've more photos at my blog here. Don't worry, all are safe for work.)
Mapplethorpe died prematurely of AIDS in 1989, at the age of 43. He was at the peak of his career, his photographs of celebrities and flowers particularly giving him fame and fortune just before his death. There was still much that could he could have done in his career: Dominick Dunne's February 1989 feature on Mapplethorpe in Vanity Fair touches upon the tragedy of an artist at a critical and financial peak being struck down.
Let's say that Mapplethorpe does not die in 1989. To minimize the disruption to the timeline, let's say that he possesses the CCRS-Delta32 mutation giving its possesors effective immunity frrom HIV, or that he was a slow progressor who could last to the introduction of effective anti-retrovirals in the mid-1990s. What would he have done next? Would he have entrenched himself in his role as a society photographer, moving beyond the succès de scandale that was his youth? Would he have turned back to it? What would his reaction have been to the epidemic as it unfolded around him, taking the people and the community that made him famous?
(I've more photos at my blog here. Don't worry, all are safe for work.)
Mapplethorpe died prematurely of AIDS in 1989, at the age of 43. He was at the peak of his career, his photographs of celebrities and flowers particularly giving him fame and fortune just before his death. There was still much that could he could have done in his career: Dominick Dunne's February 1989 feature on Mapplethorpe in Vanity Fair touches upon the tragedy of an artist at a critical and financial peak being struck down.
Let's say that Mapplethorpe does not die in 1989. To minimize the disruption to the timeline, let's say that he possesses the CCRS-Delta32 mutation giving its possesors effective immunity frrom HIV, or that he was a slow progressor who could last to the introduction of effective anti-retrovirals in the mid-1990s. What would he have done next? Would he have entrenched himself in his role as a society photographer, moving beyond the succès de scandale that was his youth? Would he have turned back to it? What would his reaction have been to the epidemic as it unfolded around him, taking the people and the community that made him famous?