Chicago Review, Volume 42, Number 1

Robert Mapplethorpe made this close-cropped self-portrait about a year before his death from AIDS in 1989. Although it is almost certainly not the original full-frame image (Mapplethorpe generally used a camera that produced a 6cm square-format negative), it is the final realization of this particular image, the way Mapplethorpe wanted it to look. Viewed within the context of the work – especially the self-portraits – he produced when he knew he was terminally ill, it is at once confrontational, existential, spiritual and perhaps a bit voyeuristic. As the proverb states: “The eyes are the window to the soul”.

Note: This image, cropped as it must surely be to begin with, is cropped even further (down to a single eye for each cover) on the cover of Mapplethorpe’s posthumous catalog by writer and critic Arthur Danto, as seen here.