Behind the Lens

I just rented Black, White + Gray, which likes to market itself as the documentary on curator Sam Wagstaff's relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and poet/musician Patti Smith. This is up front at Naro I'm sure due to the success of Patti's Just Kids, which I wrote about this past winter and is in my top favorite books of all time. This documentary says that's what it's about.

It isn't.

Sam by Robert

It's complimentary mainly to Sam, showing us how important his contributions to art have been. He is the one responsible for bringing photography to us in a way that isn't simply documentary, but emotive, passionate, and alive. He is absolutely the person all photography fans owe your thanks to. He made it okay for galleries to show.

pic: Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ's Flickr

He made it art.

pic: diaphotography.files.wordpress.com

Prior to Sam's amassing the insane collection of historical and modern photography (a collection that ended up being the Getty's), he worked in fine art, curating paint and sculpture mediums. He started getting more interested in photos. The onset of his relationship (partnership would not really be the correct word) with Robert changed directions for the older, richer, more educated Sam, resulting in the merging of worlds

pic: Divya Srinivasan/New Yorker

Robert's art in the beginning was shocking to many. My favorite outlook comes from Patti Smith's Just Kids, when she lovingly and eloquently--girlishly, even--recounts Robert's overwhelming need to produce art as well as immerse himself in all the sensations surrounding his subjects. He had a need to shock because that would ensure his success. There was no alternative to being an artist and no alternative to a certain dark side he wanted to document. She didn't always understand his art, but always understood he was an artist and none of this could be helped. Sam liked to call him "my shy pornographer."

Though Robert's art can easily be described as perverse, there is no doubt he had a very talented eye. Had Sam and Robert not linked up, I'm not sure either of them would have been as prestigious in the photography world. Robert needed Sam's money to promote his art. Sam needed Robert's venomous inspiration to urge him further into collecting and promoting the medium as a whole.

"This book is about pleasure, the pleasure of looking and the pleasure of seeing, like watching people dancing through an open window. They seem a little mad at first until you realize they hear the song that you are watching."

This is entire text of A Book of Photographs, Sam's coffee table book.

Andy by Robert

The film discusses how in the 1970s, Sam purchased a photograph of a shell for $10,000, the highest amount ever paid for a photograph at the time. Everyone thought this was the pinnacle, that the photography market couldn't go any higher. According to Wikipedia, that record now stands at $3.34 million. Ironically, Robert Mapplethorpe makes the top ten list as of 2010 with his photograph of Andy Warhol, which sold for over $600,000 in 2006.

Sam by Robert

Patti by Sam

Patti says she felt Sam's life was a purgatory, where he had to move among different strata, be different people, always hoping to get to his personal paradise in the end.

Tragedy of AIDS struck them both down. Sam died first, and left his entire art collection and most of his money to Robert. Two years later, when Robert died, he had sold a large lot off to Christie's for a huge profit. His estate established the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation with these funds, with an initial mandate of furthering the recognition of photography as an art form of the same importance as painting and sculpture. During the last weeks of his life, he added the second mandate of supporting medical research in the area of AIDS and HIV infection.

Patti is mentioned on the Foundation's website. Sam is not.