Self-portrait, 1985

Thirty-four years after his death, Robert Mapplethorpe remains one of modern photography’s most influential figures, celebrated for his photographs of men's bodies and his striking self-portraits. With nothing off limits in his work, Mapplethorpe had a strong taste for provocation, exploration, taboos and transgression. In 1985, when Self-portrait was taken, he had already experimented with countless other ways of appearing before a camera: smoking a cigarette, in drag, and even wearing devil horns. Here, Mapplethorpe adopts a more candid raw attitude, he comes across as a man aware of his own fate. In Self-portrait, we get the feeling the photographer is recording and confronting the passage of time, and by doing so, tackling the prospect of his own death. By taking one more picture of himself Mapplethorpe continues to add to his legacy.

Célébré pour ses photographies de nus masculins mais aussi pour ses autoportraits saisissants, Robert Mapplethorpe demeure, trente-quatre ans après sa disparition, l’une des plus importantes figures de la photographie contemporaine. Ayant un goût prononcé pour la provocation, l’exploration, le tabou et la transgression, l'artiste ne s’impose aucune limite dans son travail. Au moment de la réalisation de Self-portrait en 1985, Mapplethorpe a eu le temps d’explorer une myriade d’autres façons de se présenter devant la caméra ; d’abord fumant une cigarette puis travesti en drag ou encore avec des cornes de diable. Ici, Mapplethorpe se portraiture dans une attitude plus sobre et brute, il apparait plutôt comme un homme conscient de son destin. On a le sentiment que dans Self-portrait le photographe introspecte sa propre mort. Pourtant, en se photographiant une fois de plus, Mapplethorpe amplifie son corpus d’œuvres, s'inscrivant ainsi dans l’éternité.