'When Robert Mapplethorpe looks at black men, he sees them in one of the too few modes of regard available to a white American today: he sees them either aesthetically or erotically. No wonder that they are the only two innocent and honest modes left by which the races can look at each other. And no wonder that they are the modes of regard chosen by Robert Mapplethorpe, who has always, thank the gods, been shockingly irresponsible in his work' (Edmund White). Bertolotti, A., Books of Nudes, pp.232-3.