Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

Izy Radwanska Zhang, writing for the British Journal of Photography, stated "Aside from telling a gripping story, Bailey and Barbato have succeeded in capturing the overwhelming sense of adoration and emotional paralysis felt by all those who were influenced by Mapplethorpe."^[11]

Peter Bradshaw, writing in The Guardian, stated that it was an "interesting if flawed documentary study", that "the movie is, for me, a little uncritical on the subject of Mapplethorpe’s weaknesses: his lucrative celebrity portraits now look, frankly, uninteresting" and "for me, the problem with this film is that it doesn’t analyse Mapplethorpe’s much admired photographs of flowers. How seriously did the artist take these images – how seriously should we take them? Was it that pistels and stamens and petals resembled genitalia? Is that not the point? Or were the flowers simply there to deflect criticism, to underscore a spurious context and artistic good faith? It’s difficult to tell. This otherwise thorough study does justice to Mapplethorpe’s talent."^[12]

• Official website
• Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures on HBO
• Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures at IMDb
• Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures at Rotten Tomatoes
• Official trailer on YouTube