Good news for photography fans, works by one of the 20th century’s leading photographers will be on show all summer at Stockholm's Fotografiska Museet.

Opening on June the 17th, Fotografiska Museet have put together an astonishing retrospective of nearly 200 prints from iconic photographer Robert Mapplethorpe - many of which have never been exhibited in Sweden before.

Influencing a whole generation with a formalist style drawn from classical antiquity and the renaissance, translated to a time and culture of his own - New York’s gay scene in the 1980s - he shot everything from beautifully lit unadorned male bodies to female nudes, various flowers, as well as portraits of his artist friends such as Patti Smith, Robert Rauschenberg and Louise Bourgeois.

Admittedly Mapplethorpe’s images of male nudes, phalluses, and S&M subculture are known to provoke or even shock, although they were photographed decades ago.

In 1988 Mapplethorpe responded to ARTnews with the statement;

"I don't like that particular word 'shocking.' I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before … I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them."

And we reckon if you're up north this summer, you've got an obligation to go see.

The exhibition will be on view until October the 2nd.

Image © The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. / Robert Mapplethorpe - Ken Moody and Robert Sherman [1984].