Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait (1980)
Photo: Wikipedia

Today would have been Robert Mapplethorpe’s 68th birthday. Like all revered cultural figures that are no longer with us, there seems to be a frantic and constant search to find out more about him and his life. A recent book by Philip Gefter, Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, A Biography, presents new details about a driving force behind the photographer.

According to a review in W Magazine, the biography posits that without Sam Wagstaff, Mapplethorpe’s older patron and lover, he may never have become the groundbreaking artist that we remember today. When the pair met in 1972, Mapplethorpe was still dabbling in assemblage, collage, and jewelry making. At that point, photography was still not taken very seriously as an art form. But Wagstaff, once described by New Yorker writer Hilton Als as “an artist whose medium was collecting,” completely changed the perception, simultaneously making his young, talented protege a star.

Sam Wagstaff at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1964.
Photo: Billy Name

Within five years, a small but dedicated circle of collectors had built a booming market for photography. In 1978, when the Corcoran Gallery of Art presented a show of Wagstaff’s collection, The Washington Post announced: “the collecting of photography is socially acceptable; the Establishment approves of photography-as-art.”

By then, Mapplethorpe’s relationship with his champion had evolved. No longer lovers, they were still friends, and Wagstaff remained a faithful patron of Mapplethorpe’s work. Sadly, the increasingly promiscuous photographer, who drew on his sexual escapades for inspiration, could not truly love Wagstaff as he wanted to be loved. Before the collector died of pneumonia in 1987, he sold his collection to the J. Paul Getty Museum, but held on to several of his Mapplethorpes. According to Gefter, on his deathbed, Wagstaff told his friend Patti Smith, “I have only loved three things in my life. Robert, my mother, and art.”