This exhibition showcases two portfolios of photographs. One is by the celebrated and often controversial American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; the other by Wellington photographer Peter Black.
Both photographers have created images of controlled and restrained nature. Mapplethorpe’s flower photographs are elegant, luxurious, and sophisticated. They are perfect specimens in the studio, cleaned up and isolated from nature in the wild.
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.
Continue reading at Te Papa.
The show runs through 31 August, 2007 at Te Papa, Wellington, NZ.
Via GRINZ