Jack Fritscher knew Robert Mapplethorpe personally — as a friend, a subject, and a fellow chronicler of the same gay leather and art world in 1970s and ’80s New York and San Francisco. That friendship, and Fritscher’s parallel work as a photographer himself, gives him a firsthand vantage point most Mapplethorpe scholarship lacks: he wasn’t just an admirer of the work, he was inside the circle around it, alongside photographer George Dureau, with whom Mapplethorpe is often compared and contrasted.

Collected here is Fritscher’s writing on Mapplethorpe across five decades — memoir, criticism, and eyewitness history. It includes his book Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera, his comparative essay on Dureau and Mapplethorpe, his profile of Mapplethorpe for Profiles in Gay Courage, a Drummer magazine tribute written after Mapplethorpe’s death, a poem, a video interview, press coverage including The Guardian, and a roundup of feature articles by other writers that cite Fritscher’s firsthand accounts.

Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera

Dueling Photographers: George Dureau and Robert Mapplethorpe

Profiles in Gay Courage
“Robert Mapplethorpe: Fetishes, Faces, and Flowers of Evil“

Censorship: A World Encyclopedia

Mapplethorpe, Schwarzenegger, and eBay

The Guardian: March 3, 2016 (The Guardian)  (PDF)

“Pentimento for Robert Mapplethorpe” Drummer #133, 09-1989

“The Good and Evil in Mapplethorpe’s Flowers“ (Phaidon – pdf)

“Robert Mapplethorpe: What Happened When“

“Mapplethorpe, Wigler, and the Politically Correct“

Video Interview of Jack Fritscher by A.M. Hanson (YouTube)
Jack Fritscher on his friends Robert Mapplethorpe and George Dureau, plus LGBT eyewitness history

“Mapplethorpe” (poem)

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (HBO)

Mapplethorpe (the movie)

Feature Articles on Robert Mapplethorpe Referencing Jack Fritscher

• “Am-Mapplethorpe, What a Metaphor” (pdf)
• “Robert Mapplethorpe-Look at the Pictures” (pdf)
• “Mapplethorpe Beyond the Veil of the Sublime” (pdf)
• “Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures”-Sundance (pdf)
• “Robert Mapplethorpe made Patti Smith’s…” (pdf)
• “The Good and Evil in Mapplethorpe’s Flowers” (pdf)
• “MetalBondNYC.com” (pdf)
• ‘Dominick and Elliot’, Mapplethorpe, 1979-Tate (pdf)
• “Mapplethorpe’s Muse” (pdf)
• “Short Fictions Inspired by Mapplethorpe” (pdf)