‘Radical Glamour’: Edward Enninful’s New Exhibition by Robert Mapplethorpe 

March 2024 marks Edward Enninful’s last issue as editor-in-chief of British Vogue. His next venture may come as a surprise, as the highly acclaimed fashion director curates a new exhibition in Paris of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. Pairing 46 works together, Enninful’s take on Mapplehorpe’s work is “elegant, emotive and quietly disruptive”, opening dialogues and creating new perspectives on many of the photographer’s most celebrated images.

“I’ve been working in magazines since I was 16 years old”, Enninful shares with the Financial Times, “so I always see things in twos, like a double-page spread, whether it’s to find harmony or to find contrast. That’s how I see the world.”

For The Guardian, art critic Charlotte Jansen notes that Enninful’s curatorial pairings nod to Mapplethorpe’s “fascination with duality and blurring binaries – flipping expectations of gender, high brow and low, beautiful and ugly, classical and subcultural.” The pairings are a reminder of Mapplethorpe’s multifaceted talent. “He was a master,” says Enninful. “But I think he was pigeonholed. I wanted to show the breadth of his work.”

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