Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) was a controversial American photographer whose work centered on still lifes (mainly flower images), portraiture, and figurative work which was sexually explicit and sensual. A retrospective of his work in 1989 led to a reexamination of government support of the arts.

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in Floral Park, New York, in 1946. Although he found his middle-class upbringing and neighborhood somewhat confining, he responded with fascination to the Catholic ritual and mystery which were a part of his early years. This aspect of the Church influenced his entire life. It informed the haunted, mysterious quality of much of his art even though in later years he did not consider himself a religious person.

During the 1960s Mapplethorpe attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he studied painting, drawing, and sculpture. His earliest recognition came from mixed media collages, done in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which incorporated...