Robert Mapplethorpe Untitled from the Ken Moody Portfolio 1985

  • MoMA, Floor 5, 510 The David Geffen Wing

Throughout the 1980s, Mapplethorpe, a white photographer who identified as gay, frequently collaborated with Black models such as the bodybuilder Ken Moody. “I’m trying to make sculpture without having to sculpt . . . I’m looking for perfection in form,” Mapplethorpe stated in 1983. In a coauthored essay written in 1988, Isaac Julien and Black British theorist Kobena Mercer described their “ambivalence” toward the photographs: “We want to look but don’t always find the images we want to see.” In the film Looking for Langston, Julien places Mapplethorpe’s photographs within a history of artists who depicted ideas about Black masculinity through an outsider’s gaze.

Gallery label from 2024
Medium
Photogravure with flocking and watercolor additions
Dimensions
plate: 22 3/4 x 18 5/8" (57.8 x 47.3 cm); sheet: 29 11/16 x 24 9/16" (75.4 x 62.4 cm)
Publisher
University of South Florida, Graphicstudio II, Tampa
Printer
University of South Florida, Graphicstudio II, Tampa
Edition
60
Credit
Gift of Gordon and Llura Gund
Object number
262.1991
Copyright
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission
Department
Drawings and Prints
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