Mapplethorpe: Assault With a Deadly Camera - Hardcover

Fritscher, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803893620 ISBN 13: 9780803893627

Publisher: Hastings House Pub, 1994

Synopsis

A memoir of the famous photographer by a former friend.

About this title

From the Publisher

Regarding MAPPLETHORPE, the LIBRARY JOURNAL said "...brutally frank memoir...a documentary of our times. Recommended for popular culture collections." The NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS said "MAPPLETHORPE is a personal memoir, a polemic, and several others things besides."

From the Author

"I first wrote about my friend Robert Mapplethorpe in 1977, and have often written about his photography, his person, his psyche, his fame, and his lifestyle in the larger context of the wonderful, rarified times in which we lived before AIDS. I want Robert to be remembered as a person, not just a cause celebre. In my memoir, I gathered together a group of Robert's friends and I invited them to sit together, so to speak, in a circle and keen what we lost. My book is in many ways the Irish wake that Robert Michael Mapplethorpe deserved, sort of like the difference between the public mourning of Princess Diana and the private grief of her friends at whatever remove from the palace. I had the joy of spending time with painter-photographer GEORGE DUREAU; and of interviewing photographers such as JOEL-PETER WITKIN to whom I gave the honor of the last word in the book. Many people hated Robert because he became rich and famous and told artists not to live in any ghetto. Unlike some of the bourgeois writing about Robert, I was not afraid to address the politically incorrect issues of race, gender, scatalogy, and satanism. I am not a Catholic-raised little girl writing scary reports of a world whose premises I do not understand. Huh! I fully understand! I pulled no punches in my account, but I also let ellipses happen with delicacy because I care about the other versions of Robert Mapplethorpe that can be told by his other intimates like the rock-poet PATTI SMITH, and his house/model, JACK WALLS. All of us realize that Robert notoriously kept his friends apart in life, so they couldn't compare notes. My reminiscence, a critic recently wrote, is in some respects a sicker, darker version of a kind of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF EVIL...AND EVIL. I'm very please when filmmakers, both dramatic and documentary, consult this book for the truly colorful details of Robert's life in that epoch. Actually, I loved him...."

Edition details

• Publisher: Hastings House Pub
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0803893620
• ISBN 13: 9780803893627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306