Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait

Robert Mapplethorpe was born in Queens, New York, in 1946 to Henry Irving Mapplethorpe and Joan Dorothy Maxey.

Robert Mapplethorpe's mother, Joan Mapplethorpe née Maxey

Robert's mother, Joan Maxey (1920 - 1989), was a daughter of James Maxey (1889 - 1958) of New York. James' father was Michael Maxey (1864 - 1932) of Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. Michael was a son of Timothy Maxey, the Clonmel Fenian who was exiled to the USA with his wife and children following his release from prison in 1867.

Robert Mapplethorpe studied Graphic Arts in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Whilst living with his girlfirend, Patti Smith, in New York in the late 1960s. He initally specialised in polaroid photography before focusing of portraiture of friends and acquaintances.

Robert's portrait of Andy Warhol, 1986

Through the 1970s, Robert achieved growing internatoinal attention and success. He photographed names such as Andy Warhol, Patti Smith and David Hockney.

In 1989, Robert died in a Boston hospital from AIDS and was buried in his mother's family grave in New York, under the name 'Maxey'.

Robert Mapplethorpe's grave, New York

Robert's work would be displayed in many locations internationally, including the Getty Museum and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2010, Robert's former girlfriend, Patti Smith, published a best-selling memoir about them called 'Just Kids', which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Following his death, Robert's brother, who went by the name Ed Maxey, continued his older brother's artistic journey and marked out his own path in the world of photography.