He puts down his camera just long enough to accept the award. As Anna Wintour famously said, “We all get dressed for Bill.”Īs director Richard Press’ film shows, Cunningham simply lived to shoot, even taking pictures at his own awards ceremony when he was given a prestigious award by the French Ministry of Culture. But he was right at home among New York’s top-tier society, including Brooke Astor. (In Paris at one point in the film, he declines to photograph Catherine Denueve, shrugging, “She wasn’t wearing anything interesting.”)Ĭunningham, who passed away in 2016 at age 87, lived modestly in a tiny storeroom in Carnegie Hall that was crammed with file cabinets holding every negative he ever took. He was interested in seeing how everyday people dressed and couldn’t care less about celebrities. Mapplethorpe said, “I don’t think it’s important who’s in the photographs if the pictures are good.” But he also believed in “exploiting” himself as much as any of his subjects, as in the infamous self portrait with whip.Īlthough Bill Cunningham rubbed elbows with the wealthy and famous while snapping photos for his two New York Times columns, he preferred to remain behind the camera.Ĭunningham’s column “On the Street” documented changing street fashion for decades. Like Newton, he’s been accused of objectifying his subjects. While his brother Edward (also a photographer) says Robert loved shocking people, Mapplethorpe himself said, “I was always amazed that it shocked people.” As he delved further into the gay BDSM underground of New York City, he turned his camera on that world, as well. Mapplethorpe began by photographing his muses and lovers, including then-girlfriend Patti Smith. Mapplethorpe’s greatest fame-and controversy-came after his death in 1989 of AIDS. Back in the ’80s, no one, not even the ambitious artist, would dream that one of his photos that originally sold for $250 would fetch more than $300,000 at auction. The pictures were something the art world-and the world at large-had never seen before: homoerotic BDSM photos often featuring Mapplethorpe himself.įriend Fran Lebowitz laments that she threw away several of his photos. Jesse Helms angrily waving some of Mapplethorpe’s explicit photos around during a session of Congress and demanding, “Look at the pictures!” This made-for-HBO doc directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato opens with Republican Sen. Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016) People tell me I don’t photograph the soul. I’m interested in what I and my camera see. I have no interest at all in the people I photograph. Newton’s own take on his often controversial work: “I’m a professional voyeur. Were Newton’s nudes empowering the women he photographed or was he simply objectifying them? One of his models says Helmut was holding a mirror up to society, “and there’s a lot of misogyny” to reflect. Isabella Rossellini, whom Newton shot with David Lynch circa Blue Velvet, has a more nuanced take on the late German photographer, “He photographed women the way Riefenstahl photographed men: There was something powerful and beautiful, but also frightening and repellent.” Newton famously photographed her in a series of striking nude shots with then-boyfriend Dolph Lundgren. “He was a little bit of a pervert, but so am I, so that’s okay,” laughs Grace Jones, one of many of Newton’s subjects interviewed for Gero von Boehm’s documentary. Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (2020) While the five documentaries that follow are a great place to start, we also recommend Agnes Varda’s Oscar-nominated Faces, Places and Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (directed by her sister, Barbara). And you might not have heard of portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman if not for Errol Morris’s documentary about her. Both Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe-with their controversial nudes, their celebrity subjects and their undeniable artistry-helped transform photography into the in-demand, valuable medium that it is today.īy contrast, beloved New York Times street photographer Bill Cunningham shunned the spotlight, as did Vivian Maier, whose extraordinary street photos only came to light after her death.
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