Mark Morrisroe

Mark Morrisroe’s life and work were inseparable. The unofficial leader of what has now been coined The Boston School (including Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tabboo!,and Gail Thacker—a group of artists who attended either the School of the Museum of Fine Arts or Massachusetts College of Art between 1971 and 1984), Morrisroe’s work typifies in many ways what is now understood as autobiographical photography. Nonetheless, Morrisroe is unjustly perhaps one of the least-known members of this circle due to his tragic death from AIDS-related complications at the age of thirty in 1989.

Now revered with an almost cult-like fervor among a select group of artists, including many of those who knew him during his lifetime, Morrisroe created some of the most important and influential photographic images in the late 1970s and 1980s. Indeed, Morrisroe’s diaristic artwork was fueled by his notoriously radical persona—a teenage prostitute raised by a drug-addled mother who turned her own tricks while her son slept in the next room.

In both Polaroids and signature color photographs, Morrisroe created a rough, gritty style unto his own. Often scrawling unusual and elaborate texts along the borders of his prints, the artist also would re-touch fingerprints, scratches, and dust found throughout his images with paints of contrasting tones, thus highlighting the technical imperfections of his work. 

Courtesy of ClampArt