Robert Mapplethorpe And Obscenity Charges Robert Mapplethorpe began taking photographs in 1970 with a Polaroid camera given to him by a friend. Nearly twenty years later, when Mapplethorpe died at the age of forty-two, he was considered one of the most important photographers of his time. His elegant and sometimes shocking nudes, the black-and-white portraits, flower still lifes, and images of sexual sadomasochism had been exhibited widely and were the subject of serious critical attention in Europe and America. A few months after his death, Mapplethorpe became the focus of an acrimonious debate over federal funding of the arts when an exhibition of hi