Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) was a master photographer whose work created a pressure between light and dark, celebrity and underground, sacred and profane, ripple and form. Yet, at the same time, his work shows a deep reverence for photography in the way he balanced colour, composed his images and looked for a kind of classicism in both character and beauty in his subjects.

Born in Queens, New York, he studied graphic arts at the Pratt Institute before dropping out to become a portraitist, documenter, art and fashion photographer. He began experimenting with Polaroid cameras but by the late 1970s had moved to a medium format camera. He photographed in New York at a time in the 1970s and 1980s when creativity burgeoned across the city—magazines, media, nightclubs, artists, performers and parsimony, a time when the city was crawling out of a grungy decline into a new optimum, a new expression.

For this exhibition, Ghanaian-born British editor, Edward Enninful OBE in cooperation with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, presents his singular vision of the photographer’s work. In the exhibition, Enninful presents his selection of 46 prints in pairs, forging new dialogues between them and inviting visitors to see some of Mapplethorpe’s best known photographs anew. With this unprecedented curatorial approach to the photographer’s work, as Michael Ward Stout, president of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, says: ‘Edward has made a unique contribution to Mapplethorpe’s legacy’.

Main image: Robert Mapplethorpe, Embrace, 1982. Copyright © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.
Image carousel:  Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1975 copyright © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission; Robert Mapplethorpe, Paloma Picasso, 1980 copyright © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.