[Repposted from an old ID article from 28 March, 2017]
As he debuts photographs of the provocative artist made during a late night in 1979, Leatherdale shares his memories of Mapplethorpe and downtown New York.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many considered New York to be a city in decline (the Council for Public Safety produced a controversial pamphlet aimed at keeping tourists out of town entirely). Yet the era produced a generation of renegade New York artists. As hip-hop emerged in the Bronx, the burgeoning punk movement cross-pollinated with the avant-garde nightlife scene downtown. In this post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS period, members of NYC’s queer community were breaking new ground not simply in the art they made, but also with the lives they lived. The work and ideas produced in this era still profoundly shape New York today.
