Robert Mapplethorpe gathers a broad account of the photographer’s practice, from floral still lifes, nudes, portraits, and self-portraits to a smaller selection of color work. The emphasis remains on the black-and-white photographs for which he is particularly known. Seen together, these recurring subjects establish the scope of an artist who made the flower, the face, and the body sites of sustained photographic inquiry.

Mapplethorpe arrived at photography through an education in painting, drawing, and sculpture in Brooklyn during the 1960s. He began taking photographs after acquiring a Polaroid camera in 1970. That background helps frame the work presented here: subjects conventionally separated by genre are brought into a shared formal field, while images capable of provocation retain their place within a wider artistic practice rather than being treated as an isolated chapter.

Published by Phaidon Press in 2020, this revised and updated monograph extends to 384 pages. Its substantial hardcover format—approximately 30.8 by 29.2 centimeters—supports the breadth of the survey, allowing monochrome portraits, self-images, studies of the nude, and still lifes to be considered alongside the less familiar color photographs. The result is not a narrowly thematic selection but an overview structured around the range of Mapplethorpe’s photographic output.

For a serious collection, the book’s significance rests in that range and in the historical trajectory it makes visible: an artist trained across several media, turning to the camera at the beginning of the 1970s and developing an influential, frequently challenging body of photographs across distinct subjects. As a revised survey in a generous format, it offers a useful reference point for examining how Mapplethorpe’s reputation is grounded not in a single category of image, but in the continuities running through his portraiture, figure studies, flowers, self-portraits, and color work.