Robert Mapplethorpe became well known for photographing male nudes in a homoerotic style in the 70s and 80s. George Dureau was ten years older than Mapplethorpe and like him, he was also gay and photographed nude men in black and white. However, Mapplethorpe was accused of treating the black men of his photographs as sexual objects and was accused of racial fetishisation. Dureau on the other hand, was reviewed as showing a more human side to the men he photographed.
Being gay was a criminal offence until 1967 and Mapplethorpe was the first to exhibit these erotic photos in the era of gay liberation and sexual revolution. Mapplethorpe died in 1989. Dureau died in 2014 at the age of 83.
Although Mapplethorpe is the one with the household name while Dureau is little known, it seems it was Dureau who influenced Mapplethorpe. Dureau’s major photographic series featured intimate studio portraits of handicapped people. He would ride around on his bicycle to scout for models and then invite them back to his studio to shoot them. He describes his subjects as “triumphantly handicapped people”. He had been fascinated with disabled people since childhood.
Born in 1930, Dureau grew up in New Orleans and moved to the French Quarter as an adult. He provided a space where everyday people from the streets became visible, he gave them a presence and framed them beyond being a sexual being.
Initially he was into drawing and painting and only took photographs for research for his drawings and paintings. He only started to photograph seriously in the 1970s. He often fed, sheltered and paid the bills of his models and considered them friends.
One cannot discuss Mapplethorpe’s work without also discussing the work of Dureau. They met in the late 1970s when Mapplethorpe was inspired by Dureau to photograph black men. It is noteworthy to point out that his shots of black male models came several years before Mapplethorpe’s Black Book, yet Mapplethorpe got the exposure.
“Robert Mapplethorpe loved visiting Dureau, but not for the food. Robert was made quite anorexic by drugs; his main interest was in Dureau’s latest ideas. Mapplethorpe was a collector of Dureau’s photographs and a closet student” said Jack Fritscher, journalist/photographer.
George Dureau: The Photographs is an album of Dureau’s photographic portraits spanning the forty years of his artistic career. Most of the images are taken in New Orleans. Only one book of Dureau’s photographic work has been previously published, in 1985: New Orleans, 1985, which is now out of print.
