“AN ALMOST SUBLIME SIMPLICITY AND INTENSITY”

MAPPLETHORPE, Robert. Lady Lisa Lyon. New York: Viking, (1983). Quarto, original black cloth, original dust jacket. $3200.

First edition, cloth issue, of Mapplethorpe’s “whirlwind tour of one lady’s anatomy, and other eccentricities” (Foreword),with over 100 photogravure plates, signed by both Mapplethorpe and bodybuilder Lisa Lyon on the half title.

"Robert Mapplethorpe first gained widespread notice in the late 1970s for his elegantly composed, beautifully printed black-and-white photographs of the male figure… But he photographed the female nude with equal stylishness. Throughout his career he made portraits and still lifes of an almost sublime simplicity and intensity" (New York Times). Mapplethorpe's Lady Lisa Lyon is a groundbreaking collaboration between the photographer and pioneer bodybuilder Lisa Lyon: a work in which Mapplethorpe, like Diane Arbus and others, suggested "the American Dream was enacted in different ways… [by] groups of people with wildly diverse lifestyles and beliefs" (Roth, 22). Text by Bruce Chatwin; Foreword by Mapplethorpe's longtime partner and influential photography collector, Samuel Wagstaff. Cloth issue, published the same year as the issue in wrappers, no priority established; this hardcover issue is scarcer. Open Book, 328. Publisher's review slip, two photographic prints laid in.

A fine copy, desirable signed by Mapplethorpe and Lyon.