His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images.

His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[15] In the mid-1970s, Wagstaff acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and Mapplethorpe began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites.

From 1977 until 1980, Mapplethorpe was the lover of writer and Drummer editor Jack Fritscher,[16] who introduced him to the Mineshaft (a members-only BDSM gay leather bar and sex club in Manhattan).

"[18][19][20]) By the 1980s, Mapplethorpe's subject matter focused on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities.

His body was cremated, and his ashes are interred at St. John's Cemetery, Queens in New York City, at his mother's gravesite, etched "Maxey".

[23] Since his death, the Foundation has not only functioned as his official estate and helped promote his work throughout the world, but has also raised and donated millions of dollars to fund medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV infection.

[24] The Foundation donated $1 million towards the 1993 establishment of the Robert Mapplethorpe Residence, a six-story townhouse for long-term residential AIDS treatment on East 17th Street in New York City, in partnership with Beth Israel Medical Center.

[30] One of the black models he worked with regularly was Derrick Cross, whose pose for the self-titled image in 1983 has been compared to the Farnese Hercules.

[30] Other subjects included flowers, especially orchids and calla lilies, children, statues, and celebrities and other artists, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Debbie Harry, Susan Sontag, Kathy Acker, Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones, Amanda Lear, Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, Philip Glass, David Hockney, Cindy Sherman, Joan Armatrading, and Patti Smith.

[32] His work often made reference to religious or classical imagery, such as a 1975 portrait of Patti Smith[33] from 1986 which recalls Albrecht Dürer's 1500 self-portrait.

"In the summer of 1989, a traveling solo exhibit by Mapplethorpe brought national attention to the issues of public funding for the arts, as well as questions of censorship and the obscene.

Titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, the show included photographs from his X Portfolio, which featured images of urophagia, gay BDSM and a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus.

The Corcoran cancelled the show, terminating its contract with the ICA, because it did not want to get involved in the political issues that it raised, but instead the gallery was pulled into the controversy, which "intensified the debate waged both in the media and in Congress surrounding the NEA's funding of projects perceived by some individuals...to be inappropriate.

And if art can be considered a form of free speech, is it a violation of the First Amendment to revoke federal funding on grounds of obscenity?

[57] In 1992, author Paul Russell dedicated his novel Boys of Life to Mapplethorpe, as well as to Karl Keller and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In 2000, Pictures was seized by two South Australian plain-clothes detectives from an Adelaide bookshop in the belief that the book breached indecency and obscenity laws.

[62] Police sent the book to the Canberra-based Office of Film and Literature Classification after the state Attorney-General's Department deftly decided not to get involved in the mounting publicity storm.

Eventually, the OFLC board agreed unanimously that the book, imported from the United States, should remain freely available and unrestricted.

It explores the influence Mapplethorpe, curator Sam Wagstaff, and Patti Smith had on the 1970s art scene in New York City.

[70] In June 2016, Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons debuted his men's Spring 2017 collection inspired by Mapplethorpe's work and featuring several of his photographs printed onto shirts, jackets, and smocks.

[73][74][75][76][77][78] In January 2016, filmmaker Ondi Timoner announced that she was directing a feature about him, Mapplethorpe, with Matt Smith in the lead role.

[82] In 2022, Isaac Cole Powell played a character in American Horror Story: NYC named 'Theo Graves' loosely inspired by Mapplethorpe's life as an erotic photographer, relationship with his mentor and art curator Sam Wagstaff, and death from HIV/AIDS complications.