A chance meeting in Brooklyn

In summer 1967, Patti Smith arrived in New York from New Jersey and met Robert Mapplethorpe, a curly-haired art student, in a Brooklyn brownstone. He woke, smiled at her, and their lifelong friendship began.

“It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me.”

Lynn Davis finds her way to New York

Photographer Lynn Davis moved to New York in 1974 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she had fallen in love with darkroom work. She was hired to photograph rising poet and punk musician Patti Smith for Esquire.

Three photographers recognize kinship

Around 1975, Davis saw Mapplethorpe's photographs and recognized a kinship in their work. Both were making formal studies of nude models as fine art photographers and began spending time together visiting galleries and making portraits of each other.

Letters across distance

When Smith moved to Detroit in the late 1970s with her husband Fred Smith and children, both Davis and Mapplethorpe kept in touch through letters. Their correspondence deepened after Mapplethorpe was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986.

Bonded through grief and loss

After Mapplethorpe died in 1989 at age 42, Davis and Smith bonded over caring for their shared friend, motherhood, grief, and loss. They maintained a profound friendship that has lasted decades.

Smith at 27, captured by Davis

Davis photographed Smith for an unpublished Esquire portfolio called Outrageous Ladies. Smith was 27 and wearing tight pants and a jacket, appearing open and vulnerable in front of the camera.

“how unique she was from the get-go”

The interview that never finished

The Esquire journalist left disgruntled when Smith insisted on folding laundry for her musician boyfriend about to go on tour. Smith felt no restrictions as an artist and chose to care for her partner, finding the journalist's expectations amusing.

Mapplethorpe through Davis's lens

Davis photographed Mapplethorpe in 1979 and 1982, capturing him resting with his head on his arms, then seated in a black leather blazer with a leather tie. Each portrait shows his evolving self-possession.

Freedom captured in photographs

In Mapplethorpe's 1979 portraits of Davis, she wears an elegant black shirt with her arms raised, eyes closed in an unguarded moment. Her posture radiates energy and determination in another frame.

“Everybody looks exactly like themselves. Life was the art.”

A song for a lost friend

Smith cowrote the song Paths That Cross with her husband Fred to comfort Mapplethorpe after his former lover Sam Wagstaff died of AIDS in 1987. The exhibition takes its title from this song.

“Paths that cross / Will cross again”

Icebergs as emotional monuments

After Mapplethorpe and photographer Peter Hujar became ill in 1986, Davis shifted to landscape and architecture photography. Her iceberg and waterfall photographs became elegies for loss, monuments to death and nature.

“It was like my own sadness translated into a kind of elegy for the lost”

Smith writes on Davis's photographs

In 2018, Smith and Davis collaborated in a baroque church in Northern Italy, with Smith handwriting on Davis's 27.5-by-27.5-inch prints. Smith initially hesitated to touch the photographs, fearing she would damage their perfection.

“I felt like I was going to mutilate [them]”

Whitman and Mapplethorpe combined

Smith wrote Walt Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric over an image of the Colossi of Memnon in Egypt. On a photograph of Blue Nile Falls in Ethiopia, she transcribed passages from The Coral Sea, her poetic tribute to Mapplethorpe.

A thousand times, a lost name

On an iceberg photograph, Smith wrote the name of Davis's son Ayrev, whom Davis had lost, nearly a thousand times. Smith loved his name because it seemed like an arrow, and he was a beautiful poet.

Faith without words

Smith and Davis struggled to categorize their bond. They have faith in their communication and care for each other without needing reformation or words. They can go weeks or years without talking but remain deeply connected.

“We have faith in our communication and our care for one another, and it doesn't necessarily need reformation or words.”

Shared aesthetic and everything else

Davis notes that few people exist in anyone's life where you can relate to almost everything they do and are. She and Smith could talk about anything from travel to coffee, bonded by aesthetic kinship and genuine understanding.

“How many people do you know where you can relate to almost everything they do and are?”

Coney Island, 1969

Smith photographed Mapplethorpe in Coney Island in 1969, capturing him as the bohemian ideal. Close-ups show his hand with veins like Michelangelo's David, adorned with a silver bracelet, rings, and a cigarette.

Absence felt in slippers

A 2002 still life by Smith shows Mapplethorpe's monogrammed slippers. His absence is powerfully felt in this simple image, a testament to their enduring connection even after his death.

Balancing joy and sorrow

Smith has lost her parents, Robert, her husband, her brother, and many others including William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. She balances the joy of knowing them with sorrow for their absence.

They still live in her life

At 82, Davis says Robert and Peter Hujar still live in her life through their work and personalities. They are not just the past. We had that time, and there will be other times, but we had that time.

“Robert still lives in my life, as does Peter. They're not just the past.”