1975
This image has stuck with me as a cornerstone of portrait photography since I saw it in Roland Barthes' Camera Obscura years ago. I find myself referencing this image in my own work, most times unintentionally at first.
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation lists it as a self portrait, although I specifically remember it being called a "portrait of a young man" elsewhere. This makes me wonder, was Mapplethorpe also interested in the way that a camera can obscure identity?
