Untitled (Phillip on a Pedestal)

Robert Mapplethorpe produced Untitled (Phillip on a Pedestal, a studio portrait of Phillip Prioleau, as part of a series of images of Black men eventually compiled in the 1986 volume Black Book. An accomplished photographer known for his classical nudes, images of gay S&M, and sensual depictions of celebrities and flowers, Mapplethorpe openly fetishized the black male body. Some of the most famous photographs from Black Book are explicitly sexual; these images have been charged with equating race and sex and thereby invoking primitivizing stereotypes. Priolueau, by comparison, is shown perched on a pedestal as if he were a work of sculpture, his body condensed and hidden from view. Yet other photographs from the series have a romantic soft focus and a much more sensual—less explicitly sexual or objectifying—gaze.