One-year-olds are a marvel. In the span of 12 months they transform from delicate sleeping blobs to tiny, personality-packed people exploring and processing the world as it blooms around them. It is delightful to watch them greet even the most mundane objects with unbridled awe (Wooden spoon! Dirty sock! Dried leaf!). But it's one of the realities of life that such raw curiosity is also so fleeting.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006; 3:27 a.m. | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
In his new book, One: Sons & Daughters, photographer Edward Mapplethorpe elegantly captures this universal, human ephemera using one of the most cliched artistic tools, the baby portrait.
Taken over the course of 20 years, the book's 60 portraits are identical in style — bare-chested babies starring straight into the camera — and yet each distinct in the slightest of ways — the curl of a lip, the angle of an eyebrow, the pooling of a tear in the corner of an eye. The portraits are a feat of artistic eye and patience. Mapplethorpe manages to not only get wiggly 1-year-olds to sit still for a photograph, but also reveal the personalities just scratching at the surface of those chubby cheeks. Below, enjoy a selection of photos from One: Sons & Daughters.
Wednesday, March 3, 2003; 9:31am | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Sunday, September 3, 1995; 12:46pm | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Saturday, September 3, 2005; 2:45pm | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Saturday, May 24, 2008; 5:10am | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Monday, January 19, 2009; 9:21pm | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Thursday, September 17, 2009; 1:30pm | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Sunday, June 19, 2011; 3:04pm | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010; 7:41am | (One: Sons & Daughters, Edward Mapplethorpe)
