Flowers And Foliage At Te Papa

21 February 2007

MEDIA RELEASE

Flowers And Foliage: Photographs By Peter Black And Robert Mapplethorpe - Te Papa, 22 February – August 2007.

Flowers and Foliage: Photographs by Peter Black and Robert Mapplethorpe opens at Te Papa on 22 February in the Ilott Room, Level 4, Te Papa.

Flowers and Foliage showcases two portfolios of photographs, each containing images of controlled and restrained nature. One is by the celebrated and often controversial American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, the other by Wellington photographer Peter Black.

Robert Mapplethorpe, best known for his sexually explicit images of men, made portraits of his friends and celebrities in the arts and entertainment fields – and took still lifes of flowers. His photographs are composed in a rigorously precise style that recalls the dramatically lit high-fashion studio photography of the 1930s.
Of his flower pictures, Mapplethorpe said, ‘Some of them have a certain sinister side to them, I think. A certain edge, a creepy quality.’

In contrast, Peter Black documents how trees and plants are used and constrained in the wider urban environment. The nature he portrays is more untidy than Mapplethorpe’s, but his images reveal that people’s everyday treatment of plants is no less controlling than that of a studio photographer like Mapplethorpe.

Flowers and Foliage: Photographs by Peter Black and Robert Mapplethorpe
Ilott Room
Level 4
Te Papa
22 February – August 2007

ENDS

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