Evaporation

"For Peter Hujar, love and lust were the primary engines of his creativity, and his men were often depicted in the highest pitch of orgasm. This is the moment, we are told, of suspension of ego, of evaporation of consciousness from the earthly plane" - Jeffrey Fraenkel

Easter

"Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" - Patti Smith

Rodin (III)

"Puede que Rodin esculpiera la Puerta del Infierno, pero Mapplethorpe llegó a traspasarla para volver retratado con los cuernos del mismísimo diablo" - Mi primera colaboración con El Asombrario.

Rodin (II)

"Uno se sentía atraído hasta la obsesión por los hombres, el otro por las mujeres”, pero esto “nunca impidió a Mapplethorpe fotografiar desnudos femeninos ni a Rodin esculpir innumerables cuerpos masculinos” - Mi primera colaboración con El Asombrario.

Rodin (I)

"No es una exposición, es un espectáculo" - Mi primera colaboración con El Asombrario.

Mapplethorpe (III)

"Realizing that gay S&M practices hadn’t been photographed in an artistic way before, he found a subject matter that suited him. He loved sex. He loved photography, and now he could combine the two" - Patricia Morrisroe

Mapplethorpe (II)

"He pushed boundaries in every area of his life; he turned pornography into art; he elevated photography to the level of painting; he opened the debate about art and censorship. Ultimately, he did everything he set out to do, and he was only 42 when he died" - Patricia Morrisroe

Mapplethorpe (I)

It has been twenty-five years since the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe passed away, yet his controversial legacy is still met with curiosity and admiration. In Paris, the Grand Palais and the Musée Rodin are commemorating the anniversary with two major retrospective exhibitions. In spite of his cult status, only a few people really knew the artist who introduced graphic homosexual erotica into museums. Patricia Morrisroe is one of those people. After almost twenty meetings with Mapplethorpe, this writer, who had been initially asked to write his profile, ended up publishing —at his request— the intimate and polemic biography of one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. Here Morrisoe shares her Mapplethorpe experiences, the six years it took to write the biography, and the times she found Mapplethorpe’s views “repellent.”

Read my full interview with Patricia Morrisroe in Dazed Digital

Hustler

"I took the Hustler photographs following a period of repressive stomping on the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, 'Freedom of Speech'. An appropriate personification of the moment would be Jesse Helms, a man deeply committed to his bigotry. He was responsible for a lot of the stomping. In 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts was attacked for supporting a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that was canceled as a result. In the same year, the money I received from the NEA had a proviso attached which required that I not transgress 'American' values. Other artist recipients called for a boycott or some kind of protest. I decided to beat Mr. Helms at his own game. I paid the 'hustlers' in these photographs with the money awarded to me by the NEA. The price was meant to be the normal cost for the lowest common denominator of street sex. Of course it varies. Hustlers lie a lot too. I've included in the titles the name, age, hometown, and price paid of each one, as an emphatic declaration of the identity mutation and the taxonomy the project implied. And, as a report to the government of its well-spent dollars" - Philip-Lorca diCorcia