While Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography can be out of the norm and strange to others, I can appreciate how he figured out who he wanted to be as a person and stuck with it. I honestly think that is hard to do. Staying passionate to what you love and not really caring about what others think is something cool about him.
Mapplethorpe wanted people to talk about him. I think it was around the beginning of the film when he was talking to his roommate saying along the lines of, people would not notice you unless you did something weird. He really did something new in his time by using photography as an art medium that people deemed unworthy. Despite some of his photography being shocking, I kind of got a laugh out of it because this guy really combined everything he loved or wanted into pieces of art and I can respect that. I enjoyed the way his pictures looked. The framing of his subjects stood out to me in an interesting and dynamic matter.
It was during class when we got asked the question: why is sex a bad thing to talk about? I think it is because we are all forced to think a certain why to the point of being controlled. I don’t think there was ever a time growing up where I learned that it was supposed to be a good thing. Sex education back in school traumatized teenage girls that if you had a baby while you were young, it’s going to ruin your life forever. It is human nature to enjoy yourselves and to explore how. I think Mapplethorpe explored in a lot of ways to the point where he understood what he wanted whether it be about art or sex.
