Once upon a time, there was a tall, handsome, and lanky young man, born in 1946 in Queens—a poet without written words, a musician without melodies, a designer without a collection, yet graced with an innate sense of style. He was searching for another world. He found it just a short train ride away, in the gritty, dangerous, and electrifying metropolis of New York.This book is a small “memorial” composed of diverse voices in an attempt to piece together, like a puzzle, the portrait of an artist—a man of iron will and velvet sensitivity. A “memorial” made up of testimonies and interviews with those close to him—models, collaborators, and experts on Robert Mapplethorpe (Pierre Apraxine, Pierre Bergé, Germano Celant, Lucinda Childs, Marcus Leatherdale, Richard Marshall, Bettina Rheims…).
