As a result, looking at the numerous one-off pieces he completed using alternative methods, what is striking is the possibility of presenting his practice as a dedicated commitment to the creation of images.
#Bdsm gimp hooded full#
Mainly known for his runs of silver monochromes, Mapplethorpe produced an eclectic oeuvre that covered the full spectrum and range of methods associated with the medium. Riding on the tails of renewed current debate, this study turns its attention to the management of an archival source, opening the way not only to a reconsideration of the artist’s oeuvre but also to a better consideration of its place in the history of photography.
#Bdsm gimp hooded archive#
This article is dedicated to the archive of the American artist Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), stored since 2011 at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Although such commodification is offered up as aspirational, it is potentially highly problematic in the ways that it attempts to further render Smith’s blackness ‘safe’ for audiences." Mythic phallic power and desire is displaced onto clothes and accessories that function to construct Smith’s on-screen personas as a new male hero with cross-over appeal in order to maximise his celebrity commodity status. In starting to readdress this absence, I will argue that whilst Smith’s body initially appears to be fetishised, his representation is characterised by performance and fragmentation which renders the body and blackness a construction, rather than a naturalised / essentialist object of desire. Despite Smith's popularity with audiences, together with the on-screen product placement and off-screen promotion of fashion brands such as Ray-Ban, Puma, Belstaff and Converse, the intersection of Smith, black masculinity and fashion does not appear to have been the subject of extended academic attention. Building on existing critical work on costume, identity and cinema (Bruzzi, Church Gibson, Gilligan), the article forms part of my wider research project, which includes a forthcoming monograph, that responds to calls for further interdisciplinary work exploring the ‘new nexus’ of film, fashion and consumption that has emerged as cinema ever increasingly ‘bleeds across’ different media (Church Gibson 2008, 2010). Through comparative analysis with examples drawn from photography, I argue that Smith’s representation enables the black body to be rendered as fashionable and aspirational, rather than simply objectified via sexualised visual discourses. "The article examines the ways in which the representation of Will Smith in I am Legend and I, Robot constructs post-colonial performative visual narratives that both follow and disrupt existing discourses of sexualised black masculinity within visual culture.
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