Looking for a Mapplethorpe photo online

November 17, 2007 12:12 PM

I'm trying to find a Mapplethorpe photo online: it's a black&white photo of an aircraft carrier steaming out of San Francisco harbour. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It's grainy greyscale, but the identification of the call numbers stand out beautifully.

I'm familiar with the usual Mapplethorpe online databases...I'm a little schlonged out after so much searching, so any help would be appreciated.

posted by KokuRyu to media & arts (10 comments total)

Are you sure it's a Mapplethorpe photograph? Most of his work was in-studio: portraits, nudes, flowers and statuary. I can't really ever recall an image like that which you describe. Any more details about the photo that you remember?
posted by ericb at 1:07 PM on November 17, 2007

By any chance are you thinking of this advertisment (by David Lachapelle for Diesel in 1994, with former couple Bob and Rod Jackson-Paris)?
posted by ericb at 1:15 PM on November 17, 2007

*advertisement*
posted by ericb at 1:16 PM on November 17, 2007

No, not that advertisement...it's not a typical Mapplethorpe. It's just a grainy gray shot of an aircraft carrier on the ocean in the distance, shot with a telephoto lens to increase the contrast and graininess. But the call numbers on the superstructure are burned into the print. I don't know why, but it was a compelling image that has stayed with me for years.
posted by KokuRyu at 1:28 PM on November 17, 2007

Grasping at straws here, but I wonder if it was a photograph that was part of a series -- possibly accompanying his tattered American flag photograph (1977).
posted by ericb at 1:39 PM on November 17, 2007

Getting there, ericb
posted by KokuRyu at 2:18 PM on November 17, 2007

I know exactly which photo you're talking about...It's in my Big Book of Mapplethorpe. Hang on, let me see if I can find it...

It's called The Coral Sea, from 1983. I couldn't find a good picture of it, but it appears on the cover of Patti Smith's book of the same name, poems she wrote after he died.

I would love to have a good print of that hanging in my house. (I can say that about a lot of his photos, actually!)
posted by spacewrench at 2:56 PM on November 17, 2007

Here's the largest picture of Coral Sea I can find

Is that even the photograph you're looking for?
posted by Gerard Sorme at 3:35 PM on November 17, 2007

Yes. Thanks.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:10 PM on November 17, 2007

the call numbers stand out? really?
posted by tremspeed at 11:07 PM on November 18, 2007