2 Quotes from Dublin

From the Robert Mapplethorpe Retrospective in Dublin, Ireland 11/96 - 1/97:

“I don’t feel uplifted after seeing this display. Confused, maybe. A little startled, I guess. Maybe it’s just too American or something. Just not very cultured, unless you consider the flowers but there weren’t many of them, were there?”
11/31/96, Dublin, Ireland

“I thought the guy was old-fashioned because he relied n studio equipment for his work. So much of this stuff is controlled, brilliantly controlled. I personally like less contrived set-ups where the photographer has little say concerning what is going to happen”
12/6/96, Dublin, Ireland

Comments

[Niall Flaherty]

I went to this show in the Gallery of Photography in Dublin at the time, I was struck in much the same way as those who commented above. While the political/ social scene surrounding RM's work in the States provided a great backdrop for his images, the show in Dublin was some years and some distance removed from the drama.
They seemed so cold, leaving the viewer out. Their poetry was difficult to read. Their memorial value seemed much greater.

[Zelligg]

Hey, Clarie, I followed you from WritersCafe. I'm so glad! This is a homeschool in all my best senses of the words! So much to learn. So much to augment work and artists I am already ensnared by. (I stalk Man Ray.) But unpublished Diane Arbus?? Wow. B&W film was my first seduction; I have hidden many Avedon glam shots to, oh, book or collage or frame in rotation or Greta Garbo...which comes first, the beauty or the light?

[clarie]

the light, always the light