Review by Ann Copeland: "Patti Smith's foreword, "A Final Flower," is a poetic tribute to the late photographer whose recent retrospective exhibition sparked a national legal debate over censorship in the arts. Smith's observation that Mapplethorpe embraced "the flower as the embodiment of all the contradictions reveling within," and in these photographs "found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else," enlarges this work in a meaningful way. The 50 color photographs of flowers taken over the past decade "by one who caused a modern shudder" are surprisingly conventional yet uniquely striking in their composition and lighting; Smith attributes their power to Mapplethorpe's "unflinching perception of the color, form and personality of the flower." The book's simple and sublime presentation--each opening a full-page plate facing a blank--serves to remind us that Mapplethorpe was a masterful photographer, not just an iconoclast."

The definitive collection of Robert Mapplethorpe's flower photographs
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) is one of the twentieth century's most important artists, known for his groundbreaking and provocative work. He studied painting, drawing, and sculpture in Brooklyn in the 1960s and started taking photographs when he acquired a Polaroid camera, in 1970.
Beginning in 1973 and until his death in 1989, Mapplethorpe explored the flower with extraordinary dedication, using a range of photographic processes — from Polaroids to dye-transfer color works. In carefully constructed compositions, he captured roses, orchids, snapdragons, daisies, tulips and other species — both common and rare — and forever transformed the way we perceive a classic and familiar subject. The result — a stunning body of work — is collected in this elegant book, Mapplethorpe Flora: The Complete Flowers.

Showcases sixty-five self portraits, many previously unpublished and culled from his earliest works, that offer insight into the photographer's complex personality and self-explorations.