James Dean with a camera (and whip): Robert Mapplethorpe the film star

The darkly intense photographer was born for the big screen treatment he is about to receive. This is one provocative artist who deserves immortality

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures - Sundance 2016 review

Robert Mapplethorpe was born for the big screen. The controversial photographer who died in 1989 at the age of just 42, after a fight with Aids, was dashing, dark and dangerous. He imagines himself as some kind of sinister screen idol – James Dean reinvented by David Lynch – in a self-portrait out of which he gazes with sexually charged insolence, macho in black leather jacket and slicked hair, cigarette hanging from his lips, a dark star from Hollywood’s nightmares.

Related: Matt Smith to play photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in biopic

Related: Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures review – documentary pulls no punches

Related: Just Kids by Patti Smith | Book review

Continue reading...