Mapplethorpe’s Passion

BY: PROVOKR Staff

“Look at the pictures, look at the pictures” demanded former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms in his public denunciation of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s work as pornography. In the new HBO documentary on Mapplethorpe, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato take the demand the Senator made back in 1989 and turn it on its head. Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, debuting April 4, wants viewers to see Mapplethorpe’s photographs—which range from shots of S&M themed nudes to beautifully-lit calla lilies—as the works of art they truly are. The documentary also aims to give a broader picture of the man behind the camera, focusing on Mapplethorpe’s early years in New York, his lifelong friendship with singer Patti Smith, his lovers, his siblings and his professional mentors. Using rediscovered interviews of Mapplethorpe—who died of AIDS in 1989—Look at the Pictures has the photographer himself narrate his life story. Ultimately, the documentary aims to be a fitting rejoinder to the attempts at censoring Mapplethorpe’s work. As the filmmakers boast of the documentary, “even his most shocking and forbidden images are included without blurs, without snickers—in other words, exactly as the artist intended.”