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Robert Mapplethorpe

Ken Moody and Robert Sherman
1984

Not on view

Date
1984

Classification
Photographs

Medium
Gelatin silver print

Dimensions
Sheet: 19 11/16 × 15 7/8in. (50 × 40.3 cm) Image: 15 1/8 × 15 3/16in. (38.4 × 38.6 cm)

Accession number
97.103.3

Edition
AP 1/2

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

Rights and reproductions
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission

API
artworks/11520

In this luminescent black-and-white photograph, Robert Mapplethorpe portrays two of his friends–a black man, Ken Moody, and a white man, Robert Sherman. The subjects are rendered in profile and appear unusually still, a quality that would later mark Mapplethorpe’s still-life photographs of flowers. Set against a uniform dark background, the work highlights its own contrasts: closed eyes and open eyes, black and white, texture and smoothness, tension and harmony. In this study of quiet, classical beauty, even the men’s physical imperfections appear smooth and polished. These extraordinary effects result from Mapplethorpe’s punctilious engagement with the details of the photographic process, from the selection of film and paper to nuances of staging and lighting. He often shot five or six rolls of film to produce a single photograph.