[Robert Mapplethorpe]

Your Mirror: Portraits from the ICP Collection
Section: Celebrity
David Seidner was born in Los Angeles and moved to Paris at age seventeen to work as a fashion photographer. By nineteen, his pictures were appearing on magazine covers. During the two decades that followed, he worked internationally for magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar and became an established name in the world of fashion. Seidner was fascinated with the classical arts, and many of his projects were inspired by historical paintings and sculptures. He often used techniques of lighting,
cropping, and fragmentation, the latter inspired by his philosophical mentor, the avant-garde artist John Cage. In this portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989), the image is constructed of five separate contact prints. Mapplethorpe, who created many self-portraits but did not like to be photographed by others, does not make eye contact with the viewer.