Robert Mapplethorpe — American Photographer born on November 04, 1946, died on March 09, 1989

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his sometimes controversial large-scale, highly stylized black and white photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork... (wikipedia)

People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.
I would never have done what I'd done if I'd considered my father as somebody I wanted to please.
I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn't. And that's a tough place to be because you're never satisfied.
I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.
To make pictures big is to make them more powerful.