- Ann Demeulemeester, White Shirt, S/S 1992. - Ann Demeulemeester, Art Installation “Woolgathering”, 2000. - Patti Smith, Selfportrait,1971. - Ann Demeulemeester, Tank Top “Woolgathering Collection”, S/S 2000. - Still from documentary “Dream of Life” (2008). Ann Demeulemeester and Patti Smith bringing flowers to the grave of English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake.
Sorry for the long inactivity, but it was summer and I didn’t have much time to post.
I travelled a lot this summer and one bigger trip I did was to New York City! As it has always been such a popular city to photograph, I have also posted a lot of photos taken there. It was amazing to see all the iconic places from those photos like Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Flatiron building and many others. But naturally, New York has changed a lot and nothing really looks like on all those old photos anymore.
I also visited many museums and so it happened that there was an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos on Guggenheim.
I featured him on this blog a long time ago. You can see his photos here.
Here are some of the photos from the exhibition. It was nice to recognise some of them because I had posted them on my blog :)
Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter (1979) by Robert Mapplethorpe
A same-sex couple, posed in hypermasculine leather outfits, display bondage equipment that reinforces the perceived power imbalance suggested by their age difference. Yet what is most jarring about this image, perhaps, is the daring mismatch that Mapplethorpe constructed between the sitters’ defiant self-presentations and the scene’s conservative setting. Desires that were often considered extreme are here celebrated as part and parcel of everyday experience.
[…]
During the culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s, an era marked by public homophobia and HIV/AIDS-stigmatization, a coalition featuring queer voices came together to affirm the value of Mapplethorpe’s work and to protest attempts to censor it. Mapplethorpe’s depictions of sexuality were defended both as valuable documents of a bygone era and as rigorously composed artworks that spark valuable conversations about identity, Eros, and difference.
