Photography - Thane Goetz

 Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography shows us that beauty is not always something soft, and its form is not always something innocent. Mapplethorpe is often credited for his black-and-white portraits and still life images. When looking at these images, we can see that his lens was deliberate, his framing was almost mathematical. It didn’t matter if it was photographing a calla lily or a famous artist such as Andy Warhol, he was able to elevate the subject through different means, such as composition and contrast. Something that stands out to me about Mapplethorpe is the exactness of his work. For example, his portraits, which are often of different artists, dancers, and lovers, are a measured exactness of the human form. There is an intensity in how he is isolating this human form, in every curl of muscle, shadow, or line is treated as an intentional geometry. It’s almost like he is using a camera the same way Michelangelo used a chisel to carve the Statue of David, however, inste...