Both famous and infamous for his photographs of gay
sadomasochistic subculture, Robert Mapplethorpe produced self-portraits throughout his
career, beginning in the early 1970s. His 1978 self-portrait with a bullwhip
would become a lightning rod for the Culture Wars of the early 1990s, but this
self-portrait, made a decade later, struck a different note. Taken just months
before Mapplethorpe died of AIDS, it is a haunting and defiant portrait, cloaked
in darkness. Focusing the camera on the skull-topped cane gripped in his right hand,
Mapplethorpe sent his own gaunt, pale face into soft focus, creating an
otherworldly distance between himself and the forcefulness of death’s
personification.