Flowers

"Flowers" is a 1990 collection of Robert Mapplethorpe's floral still lifes, published with a foreword by Patti Smith, "A Final Flower," written shortly after his death that year.

The book gathers Mapplethorpe's flower photographs from across his career. Orchids, calla lilies, tulips, and other single blooms are shot in the same controlled studio light and classical framing he applied to his portraits and figure studies. Bulfinch Press published this first edition in 1990 as a 49-plate volume printed entirely in color. Smith, a longtime friend from their years together in New York, frames the flowers as a counterpart to Mapplethorpe's more confrontational work, images that share the same eye for structure and surface.

Mapplethorpe died of AIDS-related illness in March 1989. He had turned to flowers throughout the 1970s and 1980s as a recurring subject alongside his portraits, nudes, and studies of the New York S&M scene, and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, which he established before his death, continues to manage his archive and estate.