BOCKRIS: You can almost tell from looking at the photographs how well you know the person.
MAPPLETHORPE: (Opens another portfolio.) That’s taken at Fred Hughes’ house in Paris. These are taken in the house I was staying in there. (A series of portraits of pieces of furniture, doorknobs, etc.)
BOCKRIS: It really is so strikingly different it’s got me a little speechless.
MAPPLETHORPE: It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and there I was in the situation where I did it. This is taken at Fred Hughes’ house. They have a fantastic place in Paris. That’s Versailles. (Series of shots of French countryside. Robert closes the book.) But see I want to do it all. I don’t want to just concentrate on one thing. I want to know that I can do it all. (We are now arriving at airport.) You can come out, right?
BOCKRIS: Oh yeah, I’ll come out and sit with you for a while. We’ll have a drink.
MAPPLETHORPE: I haven’t got to leave until five.
BOCKRIS: You haven’t got to get on the plane until five? Oh God!
MAPPLETHORPE: How did we get here in half-an-hour?
BOCKRIS: Yeah well see I was surprised at how much time you were giving yourself, but I thought you were just very careful or something.
MAPPLETHORPE: Yes I am. (Get out of cab and wait while Robert pays fare.)
BOCKRIS: Are you going to need a skycap or shall we just carry these ourselves?
MAPPLETHORPE: No, we can carry them.
BOCKRIS: Okay I’ll get, I’ll get, er, yeah, fine. (We walk.) “IN”. Is that us, is that where we want to be?
MAPPLETHORPE: I hope so.
BOCKRIS: This is the building that looks like a bird from the outside. We can walk around the airport or something. Is that fun?
MAPPLETHORPE: We’ll find somewhere to have a snort.
BOCKRIS: Any of these places would be okay to check in. You can just check in anywhere.
MAPPLETHORPE: I haven’t bought my ticket.
BOCKRIS: You have to buy a ticket? Well probably it’s over the other side. (Walking around looking.) OH ROBERT! Over here, “Purchase Tickets.” Just put all that stuff down right here and I’ll stand by it and then you go and purchase your ticket and come back and we’ll get in line.
Robert is going to purchase his ticket. Let me just describe what he’s taking with him on the trip. He has here a Haliburton camera case. It’s quite large. It has a combination lock and it’s made of metal and it looks like the kind of case you’d carry a hunting rifle in, broken up in three little pieces. And his camera is in there. Then there’s a very nice-looking black tripod which he always takes with him. And a very presentable suitcase. I don’t know what kind it is, has some tags from Marseilles, J.F.K. airport, Air France, Swissair. So Robert has been travelling a lot lately. He’s been to France and England, he’s been … I’m sort of surprised Robert hasn’t bought a ticket before he came out here, what if he gets here and there isn’t a ticket? On the other hand that’s probably the modern way to travel, just to go to the airport as if it was a bus station or something, get on the train. Have I got a ticket for the train to Philadelphia tonight? No. Just go to the station and get one. Oh, he is alright, he seems to be getting his money out, yes he actually is getting a ticket.
Now we have one-and-a-half hours of tape, that seems about right, I guess I’ll stay here. The suitcase is big, its about two-and-a-half feet long, maybe one-and-a-half feet high and about a foot thick. He must be taking quite a lot of clothes with him, he’s going for three weeks. I’m going to sit down on his camera case here. I hope he doesn’t mind. This is so great, it’s really great to be here at TWA’s check-in counter at J.F.K. It’s such a nice day here, it’s so lovely to be here. I guess I’ll have some white wine. Oh Robert’s waving, I’ll have to get …
MAPPLETHORPE: (Comes over) In fact I think we’ll put one of these portfolios in the case so I don’t have to carry both.
(END OF TAPE ONE/BEGIN TAPE TWO.)
BOCKRIS: What kind of suitcase is this? Any particular kind of suitcase?
MAPPLETHORPE: Oh yeah it is, but I don’t know what.
BOCKRIS: It’s nice.
MAPPLETHORPE: Somebody said it was the best one they could get.
TWA: Where would you like to sit?
MAPPLETHORPE: By a window.
TWA: Boarding starts at four-thirty, up the steps to the left.
MAPPLETHORPE: Thank you.
TWA: There’s a snack bar around the corner and a coffee shop upstairs.
MAPPLETHORPE: Thank you. (Walking away from counter.)
BOCKRIS: The snack bar doesn’t sound too good does it, let’s go …
MAPPLETHORPE: No, let’s go …
BOCKRIS: Upstairs I think, yeah.
MAPPLETHORPE: Paris has a fantastic place to eat in at the new airport.
BOCKRIS: Well they just pay so much attention …
MAPPLETHORPE: Have you seen the new airport?
BOCKRIS: No I haven’t, no. They just pay attention to food in France. You can have something good to eat anywhere. I don’t like these red and white colors much, do you? (Looking around building.)
MAPPLETHORPE: It’s like something at the World’s Fair.
BOCKRIS: Yeah I like more sort of the blue and grey airport look, the sort of British Airways. Do you have a particular airline you like best?
MAPPLETHORPE: Usually I have somebody else make a reservation.
BOCKRIS: I was really surprised you didn’t buy your ticket until you got here. Look there goes Professor Einstein! Robert here yeah. Do you like this building?
MAPPLETHORPE: Oh … I guess not.
BOCKRIS: I don’t really like it. I thought I did. I tried to. Speaking of Paris, there’s the Paris Cafe. Let’s sit over there, shall we at the side, this is good. (Look at menus.)
MAPPLETHORPE: You’re really into those gloves. (I am pulling off a pair of tan leather gloves.)
BOCKRIS: I love these gloves.
MAPPLETHORPE: As a matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons I like it to get cold because I love gloves.
BOCKRIS: I like gloves that you can do everything when you’ve got them on. It’s very hard to get men’s gloves like that. I tried to buy women’s gloves, but I was very surprised, my hands don’t fit into them. There must be women with big hands.
MAPPLETHORPE: Yeah. I tried women’s gloves and I ripped them pulling them off.
BOCKRIS: I was going to buy one of those women’s suits that look just like men’s clothes except they fit me better and they’re so cheap.
MAPPLETHORPE: Have you spent much time in San Francisco?
BOCKRIS: Yeah. Quite a lot.
MAPPLETHORPE: Because I never did. I went there … do you know what you want?
BOCKRIS: Would you like some white wine?
MAPPLETHORPE: I’d prefer not.
BOCKRIS: Okay. So I’m just going to have a drink. A glass of white wine please.
MAPPLETHORPE: Could I have a cheeseburger and a Coca-Cola. No ice. Is it cold without ice?
WAITRESS: Uuuummmm.
MAPPLETHORPE: If it’s warm put a little ice.
WAITRESS: Okay.
MAPPLETHORPE: That really irritates me that … you know beer they never serve with ice.
BOCKRIS: San Francisco is exactly what you read it was in the newspapers in the Sixties.
MAPPLETHORPE: I’m sorry I sort of missed that, but I did go out there once. The first fight I had with Patti, I went to California. I left school and just went out there for about four weeks.
BOCKRIS: You just had a fight and left?
MAPPLETHORPE: Well it was more than that, I guess it went on for a while and we sort of split up for a little but … and we ended up going back and during that time I went to California. I flew out to San Francisco not knowing anyone and met some boy on the plane who was sort of a hippie and he was going to stay in a commune so I just went with him. It was in the middle of a suburban area where all these young kids had taken over this house
and it was amazing. They were all very sweet and made food for everybody and if some didn’t have money you know … it worked at that time.
BOCKRIS: Oh it did, it worked for about two or three years.
MAPPLETHORPE: And you know everybody took all kinds of drugs. I wonder what happened to them all? Probably half of them are dead. They were so young. I mean, fourteen, and, you know, that’s pretty young.
BOCKRIS: But it would be strange to go back now. I just find it a little dull, but maybe that’s because I have relatives there which is a bad thing to have anywhere.
MAPPLETHORPE: My attraction out there is to go out there to go to leather bars and meet some people to photograph.
BOCKRIS: What a great way to live, just to travel and portray the situation.
MAPPLETHORPE: Oh there’s nothing greater than having just a camera with you and some clothes and not having to worry about things I worry about in New York, like just having the printer come in …
BOCKRIS: You have printers who come and print your work?
MAPPLETHORPE: One boy who does.
BOCKRIS: You take the pictures and just give him the film?
MAPPLETHORPE: He does the negatives and then I go through. It takes me a good week really to decide what negatives and that’s half taking pictures, is the selection. I get quite obsessive about which ones are the right ones to do. Doing a commissioned portrait say, really takes a long time for me because the actual picture taking is sometimes only fifteen minutes for a role of film but that isn’t what it’s about. Once you have the contacts figuring out which one … Then I make pieces with the pictures. And the framing is very important. At my show at Holly’s (which opens Feb 5), that would be what the show will be about, triples and doubles and a couple of singles and sometimes a sequence.
BOCKRIS: Is that a new thing photographers are doing right now or is that, has that been done for a long time?
MAPPLETHORPE: I have the greatest picture of Queen Victoria which is a sequential photograph taken by Princess Alexandra. It’s four photographs put on one page. But the thing about sequential photographs, it’s easier for people to read it as art, so it’s a gimmick. And it comes out of the conceptual ideas, relationship of one to the next, you know. I had an argument for about three weeks with Sam. You know he has this fantastic collection, and I had the argument with him about the idea after having done a lot of sequential photographs. I was saying that it’s really a wrong thing to do because it’s so often that you see one photograph out of the three that’s really the best picture and why have three when there’s one that’s better. I think if each picture holds up equally well then you can get away with it. But the whole conceptual attitude about photography is rather annoying. They think they can get away with bad quality just because ???? idea. “My idea is so important that I don’t have ???? photograph.” And I think it’s an excuse, because I used to almost use it myself, because I didn’t know that much about printing and stuff. But there’s no reason why, if you’re going to work with an idea, that the idea can’t be there as well as a beautiful image to go with it. I think that’s what it should be about and not just the idea.
BOCKRIS: What kind of life do you lead in New York?
MAPPLETHORPE: It goes from being very social to going to leather bars to working. Those are the three things I do.
BOCKRIS: Tell me what you do what percent of the time.
MAPPLETHORPE: It depends on the week.
BOCKRIS: One week you spend the whole time in a leather bar and then the next …
MAPPLETHORPE: It does almost work that way. I really get off on being social, but I don’t like to only do that. It’s a great advantage to be able to move from one world to another.
BOCKRIS: Why did you enjoy Andy’s party so much the other night?
MAPPLETHORPE: Because of the person I was with. A combination of being on the right drugs and being with the right people. And it seemed glamorous. There were a few stars, the cameras were clicking, everybody seemed in a good … I don’t know. I had a good time. You are walking through the door and having four people say hi, hi. I get off on it (giggles). In fact I think what we should do is go to the bathroom and …
BOCKRIS: Yeah. I guess so. Just leave all our stuff here do you think?
MAPPLETHORPE: We’ll go one at a time.
BOCKRIS: Okay right. Want to take this with you (offering tape recorder)? No I guess not.
(GO TO THE BATHROOM INDIVIDUALLY. COME BACK.)
BOCKRIS: Sorry I was so long. I was having so much fun. Do you find the amount of sex you’re having relates to the amount of work you are doing? I don’t know whether that’s true or not.
MAPPLETHORPE: Do you mean having more sex doing more work?
BOCKRIS: A lot of people think …
MAPPLETHORPE: No. I mean if anything could be my downfall it could be that. I could just let myself get into sex considering it’s the most exciting thing in the world to do.
BOCKRIS: So you have to discipline yourself?
MAPPLETHORPE: I have to a little bit. I was a nymphomaniac when I was in Paris. Well there’s coke there for one thing and it makes me think of sex a lot more than I would otherwise. Some people don’t, you know, are just obsessed with what they’re doing, their work.
BOCKRIS: I go through periods with sex having a lot of sex and then having no sex. It does relate to my work somehow, but I can’t figure out exactly how. Do you work pretty constantly? ’Cos those periods where you don’t work are pretty horrible.
MAPPLETHORPE: Yeah. I think few people would admit but one way of disciplining oneself is by imposing a guilt thing and I feel really nervous and neurotic if I haven’t actually accomplished anything and I think it’s more a self-imposed guilt. I mean I get neurotic if I haven’t done something. Like when I do the social thing that really is work because it’s about looking for people to photograph. So when I do the sexual thing it’s work as well. You know I do take pictures of people and stuff so I mean … Well, to what extent are your photographs an autobiography?
BOCKRIS: Quite. You’re photographing your life.
MAPPLETHORPE: Exactly. I mean I guess it is pretty close.
BOCKRIS: I always think that’s the most interesting art when someone describes whatever is right under their nose.
MAPPLETHORPE: Isn’t all great art that though?
BOCKRIS: I think so. Did you get paid well for doing Patti’s cover?
MAPPLETHORPE: Not really. I exam, for the first album you don’t get paid the same as if you did the Stones’ album cover. Then you get $5,000. It certainly wasn’t that. And Television is less.
BOCKRIS: How do you relate to money?
MAPPLETHORPE: I like it because it means that you can do so much more. If you can make it work for you. I’ve lost money for the last few years, enormous amounts, so it’ll take me years before I catch up, but the timing is right. Up until this point I’ve been able to do it. It’ll probably take another two years before I really see clear.
BOCKRIS: If Vogue asks you to do fashion spreads is that the kind of thing you will just do?
MAPPLETHORPE: If I can control it. I want to do something more than studio photography. I just think it’s too boring to do. But I want very much to do a spread in Vogue. But I don’t want to be a fashion photographer because I know fashion photographers and they might as well be brick layers. It’s nine-to-five and it’s not very creative and it can’t be ’cos everything has to come out and you can’t take risks so you end up repeating yourself. You know what you can do without taking risks. And in the end they start resenting the fact that they are commercial photographers and end up having a chip on their shoulder because they want more than that and in fact I think most of them should be doing exactly what they’re doing. Everybody’s sort of getting grand ideas about photography. “I too am an artist,” is what it comes to and you know, not every photographer is an artist. It’s one of the things that I think drugs had something to do with, people getting ego
s that went beyond their capabilities.
BOCKRIS: Well I think the mistake a lot of people make is they think you have to have a big ego in order to be an artist. I’m not sure if that’s really true or not. I don’t think it is really true.
MAPPLETHORPE: Well I suppose every artist I know has a big ego.
BOCKRIS: Well maybe it depends on how …
MAPPLETHORPE: No, not the ego. It’s the outfrontness of …
BOCKRIS: I find that very offputting in a lot of people.
MAPPLETHORPE: But I think a lot of people that have that outfront ego are in fact not artists, you know it’s a sort of neurotic …
BOCKRIS: And they get a long way on that ego …
MAPPLETHORPE: It’s a funny thing that’s happening to photography because it’s obviously going to become very important in the art world. It’s happening I think partly because painting hasn’t been interesting. I think photography is a perfect medium for this era. It’s so quick. The idea of belaboring a painting, working for a month at one image is just not conducive to this period of time.
BOCKRIS: I just moved into a new apartment and the only art work I’m going to have in the apartment is going to be photographs. It’s so nice to live with photographs.
MAPPLETHORPE: When I get back to New York I’ll show you a row of good pictures that I have. I got very much into the framing and presenting of them and they look fantastic. Even in galleries they don’t know how to display and one of the great problems of the show I’m having is figure out which way I want to show them you know. I think the way to do it is to not make it look like a photography show.
BOCKRIS: I’ll buy a packet of cigarettes before we go, okay? (Taking another.) I think I’ll have another glass of wine. Did you always think Patti was going to make it when you were living with her?
MAPPLETHORPE: She had something that nobody else I’ve ever met had.
BOCKRIS: What’s that? It’s alright I’m just waving at the waitress. Can I have another glass of white wine please?
Beat Punks Page 26
