Some of the photographs in this exhibition date from the mid-1970s. At that time photography was being used by artists in various ways: the medium was important in Earth art, and in Conceptual art, as a means of documenting performance projects and also as a vehicle to explore ideas beyond those of the medium itself. Photographs by Conceptual artists incorporated text, were intended to be read as series, and often included drawing. Other artists used photography purely to capture life; works of this type, which are termed ‘straight’ photographs, were not manipulated and were predominantly black and white. Jan Groover and Robert Mapplethorpe have hovered between those extremes. Although committed to the directorial mode of photography, in which the photographer orchestrates the whole process up to the closing of the shutter, neither of them manipulated the images in the developing and printing stages.
Mapplethorpe and Groover were contemporaries, but did not work together, though both studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, during the 1960s. Mapplethorpe studied painting, and his imagery was taken from slick magazine reproductions. He took up photography in the early 1970s with a Polaroid camera. The instantaneous process was perfect, providing him with a way of using his own pictures, rather than magazine illustrations, in his paintings. However, he did develop an interest in the photographic medium and set out to educate himself in its history, paying particular attention to the portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron and Nadar, and the nudes of F. Holland Day, Edward Weston and George Platt Lynes. In 1977, he acquired a 4 x 5 inch view camera and after that concentrated principally on black and white photography, continuing to incorporate the polished look that he had earlier appropriated from magazines.
Mapplethorpe specifically titled his photographs, but although he used visual devices similar to those used by Groover, his interest was in the objectification of his subject-matter. He repeatedly said that he was concerned with making ‘objects’ rather than ‘photographs’. His techniques of lighting and composition were commonly used in 1930s studio photography and he applied them to contemporary subject-matter to produce images which are both stylish and seductive.
Both Groover and Mapplethorpe selected the components of their photographs and constructed their images, in contrast to other photographers, who aim to depict reality. Their work demonstrates the care with which they chose the contents of their photographs: nothing extraneous to the subject appears. Even when they worked with the human figure or with portraits, their subjects were placed in artificial settings or represented by just a detail, so that they became removed from reality and objectified. But, although the formal elements of their photographs are similar, their final images are quite different. Groover chooses to use familiar, domestic subject-matter, whereas Mapplethorpe’s predilection was towards the exotic. His subject-matter was aestheticized by the formalist approach that his work shares with Groover’s, so that even his most sexually explicit photographs are presented with a cool elegance and formal beauty.
This aspect of Mapplethorpe’s photography has received mixed reactions. Some critics have argued that these works are too fashionable and polished, but this may be one of the artist’s most effective devices, as the photographs are then interpreted according to a formal, acceptable code rather than being seen as pornographic. In the 1970s and early1980s, the time of pre-AIDS sexual freedom, a homosexual substratum flourished and was evident in gay bars, baths and clubs. Mapplethorpe was a sympathetic participant in this He approached homosexuality not as a voyeur, but as an advocate wanting to demonstrate the dignity and beauty of a subject that was outside the accepted norms of behaviour. For viewers from outside that culture, the subject remains exotic and the works become glimpses of a different lifestyle.
Almost all the subject-matter that Mapplethorpe chose to work with was apparently perfect. Black men and bodybuilders are presented alongside classical statues — all for the celebration of their physical perfection. The sitters for the portraits, even if not physically perfect, are famous and chic enough to be worthy of his attentions. Similarly, the flowers that he photographed were severed from their environments, they appear immortal —with no withered parts or fallen petals. This is particularly evident in the last works Mapplethorpe produced before his death — Sonia, Ermes, Apollo and Negro bust, Calla lily and Roses — in which there is an unsettling feeling that he was denying his own mortality.
Similarly, Mapplethorpe’s portraits are not presented as character studies. The works are always confrontational and the sitters are self-possessed. They do not bring the trappings associated with their identities and they exist within the picture frame as objects, like the flower studies. His subjects are easily categorized: the body beautiful or the famous. Mapplethorpe was not interested in physically or socially ordinary people as he was from a middle-class background and knew that side of life too well to want to elevate or exoticize it.
His earliest photographs were always of himself and his friend Patti Smith, then he began using other friends and famous acquaintances as subjects. He mixed with celebrities and became one himself. His photograph Autoportrait, in drag recalls photographs of Marcel Duchamp’s alter-ego ‘Rrose Selavy’. In both cases the artists were celebrities of their own making.
Groover has not enjoyed Mapplethorpe’s personal and professional notoriety: her work is self-contained and her subjects are modest. For her, Formalism is everything’. When photographing her still lifes, she investigated spatial relationships and the characteristics of the objects themselves. She combined reflective, transparent and rough surfaces: in the two large type C photographs, Untitled 1988, pigment was applied to glass bottles as if to deny their transparency. The gaps between objects were often highlighted and perspective distortions were incorporated — this combination results in the flattening of the image to create a plane of shapes and colour. The influence of her early Minimalist paintings — large multiple-panelled paintings in which squares, rectangles and bands of colour were balanced — can be seen in these photographic works.
Groover bought her first camera in 1967, a 35 mm Pentax, and began photographing in earnest in 1970. In 1973 she moved to New York city and also began to look at photographs of still-life and nude studies by Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. She has been innovative in her use of the medium, reviving obsolete processes such as platinum-palladium printing and painting her own constructions. Her ideas remain firmly linked to the medium though: she concentrates on the exploration of scale, artificial light, heightened colour and the ability of the camera to isolate details of objects. Groover’s choice of subject-matter is secondary to her investigation of its form and the majority of her works are untitled.
The photographs of both Robert Mapplethorpe and Jan Groover are provocative and compelling. Each photographer has used similar methods, but with very different intentions, and each collection of photographs asks for, and receives, a very different response from the viewer.