Most of Mapplethorpe's portraits of children were made within the more controlled conditions of the studio, stripped of settings and props and rendered in a
rich palette of blacks, whites, and grays. Unlike his eroticized male nudes, the
photographer's images of children are never cropped, nor are sections of their body
blown up into fetishistic details. Their bodies are aestheticized, but not as sexual
beings; rather, in works such as Melia Marden (1983) and Eva Amurri (1988),
they resemble the eternally childish putti of classical and Renaissance art.
His first Polaroids were self-portraits and the first of a series of portraits of his close
friend, the singer-artist-poet Patti Smith. These early photographic works were
generally shown in groups or elaborately presented in shaped and painted frames
that were as significant to the finished piece as the photograph itself.
This stunning example of Robert Mapplethorpe's work demonstrates the dramatic evolution in the treatment and meaning of still life over the past two centuries.
Mapplethorpe's still lifes cannot be fully understood apart from his homoerotic
figurative works. Mapplethorpe interpreted flowers, the reproductive structures
of seed-bearing plants, as interchangeable with the male sex organ. Of all flowers,
he was especially attracted to the calla lily, a symbol of homosexuality.
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