GLR January-February 2026

ESSAY When BDSM Went Mainstream M ATTHEW B AMBERG

R OBERT MAPPLETHORPE brought disci plined attention and innate æsthetic precision to the photographic process, exploring the kink of leather men engaged in the paraphilias of S/M in a way that led to greater acceptance of sexual experimentation and of photography as a some times risqué art form. The avant-garde artist did the seemingly undoable—he flustered right-wing politicians with talent and meticulousness by tantalizing the senses with an innovative use of light, shadow, texture, and homoerotic meaning. Mapplethorpe’s photographic innovations were foreshad owed by his interest in the Dadaist movement of the early 20th century, a time when Marcel Duchamp brought a mass-pro duced urinal into the realm of modern art by submitting Foun tain to a 1917 art exhibition. Fountain sneered at the art world’s pieties about technical skill and creativity, leading to the prover bial question of the day (and every day thereafter): What is art? Mapplethorpe discovered this anti-establishment form of sculp ture, known as readymade art, while attending the Pratt Institute School of Art in Brooklyn in the late 1960s, and Duchamp’s iconoclasm would remain with him to the end. The title Duchamp gave the urinal, Fountain , may refer to poses, enormous black and white cocks.” In the San Francisco bar scene of the late 1970s, it wasn’t unusual to see bathtubs in bars used as urinals, with one added dimension: a urine-soaked man reveling in the yellow torrent. This joy in the experience of piss-play is demonstrated in Mapplethorpe’s 1977 photograph Jim and Tom, Sausalito , which features two leather-clad men, one standing and urinating into the mouth of the other, who kneels before him. A decade earlier, the fusion of the talents of Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, his rocker-performance artist girlfriend, helped catapult both artists to fame. Smith met Mapplethorpe by hap penstance after she arrived in New York City in 1967, finding him asleep when she arrived with her “little plaid suitcase” at the former apartment of mutual friends while seeking shelter. Their spontaneous attraction never abated, though their roman tic relationship lasted only a short time, ending after Smith dis covered Mapplethorpe’s nightly outings cruising men on the Matthew Bamberg is the author of Digital Art Photography for Dum mies and recently published a short story collection titled Coconut Grove Chronicles (KnowNot Florida Press). the stream of urine that flows into the porce lain tank, another connection to Map plethorpe’s later S/M photography of golden showers, part of a series that included what art critic Kieran Owens described in 1997 as “penis mutilation, anal penetration with a bull whip, leather-clad sadomasochistic

West Side piers overlooking the Hudson River. Mapplethorpe would later lure the men to a glossy black room in his apart ment to create his S/M photography. Mapplethorpe and Smith’s fortunes improved when he met Sam Wagstaff at a gallery show in 1972, then became romanti cally involved with him. By this time Smith understood Map plethorpe’s attraction to men. As a wealthy curator and collector, Wagstaff exerted significant influence on the art world. Map plethorpe was 25 and Wagstaff was fifty when they met. The former assisted the latter in fulfilling his repressed kink sexual ity, while Wagstaff, who was connected to New York’s elite, funded both Smith’s and Mapplethorpe’s artistic endeavors. Journalist Jerry Portwood wrote in 2014: “Sam Wagstaff was a handsome, charming high-society figure who could have done anything, but decided to leverage his money and privilege to shape modern American culture and make Mapplethorpe a star.” After Mapplethorpe had participated in and photographed gay kink sexuality for a few years, his knowledge of the sub culture piqued the curiosity of Wagstaff, who was eager to try it out. Mapplethorpe had begun exploring photography using a simple Polaroid Instamatic camera, but Wagstaff bought him a Hasselblad large-format camera that produced big, square neg the S/M subculture and understood the emotions associated with its practices, so his subjects felt comfortable with him. As Smith wrote in her memoir of her youth and her relationship with Mapplethorpe, Just Kids (2010): “Robert was not a voyeur. He always said that he had to be authentically involved with the work that came out of his S&M pursuit.” The second factor is that Mapplethorpe’s photographs featured both men and women, widening their appeal. It was this diversity and dignity that integrated depictions of S/M into his other work—such as the starkly lit images of both flowers and celebrities—and created an immense fascina tion with his photos. Mapplethorpe’s entire portfolio was based on classical beauty, elegant composition, and mastering the ma nipulation of light and shadow. Each black-and-white photo es tablishes a fluid, ethereal motion, whether the image is of Arnold Schwarzenegger flexing, a Black man’s gentle move ment in a blank space, a lone orchid before a high-contrast back ground, or the kink of tough-looking leather men whipping and bending. Mapplethorpe’s S/M performance art simulations cloud the idea that the pain inflicted by the practices shown could vary atives and allowed him to create crisper, more detailed images that could be repro duced at a larger scale while maintaining their visual integrity. Two factors helped Mapplethorpe create public acceptance for his S/M photography. The first was that he actively participated in

Robert Mapplethorpe’s S/M photographs featured both men and women, widening their appeal.

January–February 2026

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