Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures 2016

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures 2016
1h 48min | Documentary , Biography | January 2016 (USA)
Storyline:
An examination of the life and work of the revered and controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
User review:
Always absorbing doc on the life of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I appreciated getting to see so much of his work, and having more of a context of his life story to put them in.
It's funny how time, internet porn, etc has somewhat dulled the shock of his hyper-explicit gay S+M photos, but while that might have distressed Mapplethorpe, who clearly loved playing the provocateur, it makes it easier to look at his terrific of body of work as a whole, neither excluding or obsessing over the sexual images, but integrating them. Seen now, the most interesting thing about them is how beautiful they are aesthetically, but also how absolutely controlled, carefully framed, beautifully lit. In that way they are weirdly de- sexualized, not matter how 'out there' the activity. And seeing them next to, say, Mapplethorpe's images of flowers, you realize that his work has a strict aesthetic language that treats a flower and a penis the same way (and indeed, the flowers often have phallic looking elements, and the phalluses look abstract and almost made of marble.