![]() Whereas some reactionaries (even gay ones) argue that art or fiction or dance or films by gays were superior when they were indirect, ashamed, coded, Mapplethorpe revealed how rich and original explicitness could be. Of course, Mapplethorpe became infamous for his sadomasochistic pictures, but his photographs of male lovers, black and white, nude or dressed, are what he’s remembered for. In contrast, Mapplethorpe, who emerged in the anything-goes 1970s, explored his various identities “as a woman, as a gangster, as a devilish imp, as a toughie, as nothing special.” She also points out that his closeted abstractions were the photographs he exhibited, while in his private collection he kept male nudes and portraits of same-sex lovers. ![]() She pegs White, the earlier photographer, as a closeted gay man who resorted to abstraction as a way of “passing.” She treats him with sympathy, acknowledging that he came to prominence in America in the puritanical 1940s and ’50s, that he wasn’t bohemian or rich or worldly. Sischy’s philosophical and sociological bent is evident in her long 1989 New Yorker essay about the photographers Minor White and Robert Mapplethorpe.
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