Patti Smith
[Musician, artist, and writer, b. 1946, Chicago, Illinois, lives in Detroit and New York.]
Robert [Mapplethorpe] was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.
He found it was as easy to hurl beauty as anything else.
(On Robert Mapplethorpe)
...my camera is my friend, and I take it everywhere.
I love to photograph the tools of one’s trade: Duncan Grant’s paintbrushes, the typewriter of Herman Hesse, or even my own guitar, a 1957 Fender Duo-Sonic.
Everything pours forth. Photographs their history. Books their words. Walls their sounds.
When I’m on my own with my camera, taking these pictures, it feels as if I am in a room of my own, a self-contained world.
It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn’t want to be photographed.
(On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)
