Patti Smith

The singer/photographer/poet Patti Smith was at the Wadsworth Atheneum last week.  An exhibition of her photographs opened on Friday.  She was present to sell and sign her recent book Just Kids, a biography that focuses on her youth, when she and her lover, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, were starting out in the New York art scene.  She was placed in a corner, in front of a disturbing Magritte painting of a female head with blood on it.  Inspired.

I came along near the end of her book signing, when she was tired and told the staff "no more pictures."  Fortunately, I can look in one direction, aim the camera elsewhere, and stealthily push the shutter button undetected.

The exhibition was also closed to photographs, so I took a shot from outside the room.  Since Mapplethorpe was best known for his homoerotic photographs, the placement of a nude male statue to guard the room was also inspired.  It is Statue of a Youth by Gaston Lachaise.

Her photographs are very small, perhaps 2" x 3", so I didn't miss much by not taking photos inside the exhibition rooms.