Mapplethorpe

Edited by Mark Holborn & Dimitri Levas. Essay by Arthur C. Danto. Photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Random House. Prepared in collaboration with The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. New York. 1992. First edition, second impression. Hardback, square quarto; grey cloth-bound boards, dust jacket, slipcase. 382 pages. Approx. 300 duotone plates. English. 320 x 300mm. 3.6kg. 9780679408048. Near fine, in near fine dust jacket; slight shelf wear to slipcase.

'Robert Mapplethorpe began taking photographs in 1970 with a Polaroid camera given to him by a friend. Nearly twenty years later, when Mapplethorpe died at the age of forty-two, he was considered one of the most important photographers of his time. His elegant and sometimes shocking nudes, the black-and-white portraits, flower still lifes, and images of sexual sadomasochism had been exhibited widely and were the subject of serious critical attention in Europe and America... This is the definitive collection of Mapplethorpe's black-and-white photographs, drawing on the full range of his work, from the early Polaroids to the haunting self-portraits taken shortly before he died.' (from the blurb).