Synopsis

This month the National Portrait Gallery opens its doors to the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As the epitome of New York style he is less celebrated for his portraits than for the notorious photographs that chronicled the chic gay world of Manhattan. His studies of nude black men are a shameless affirmation of gay sexuality while at the same time recalling the great male icons of classical painting and sculpture. As one of the most successful photographers of modern times, his work has been instrumental in the restoration of the male nude to a primary place in mainstream art. In this exclusive film profile of the man and the people whose fast-track existence he chronicled, Arena talks to the formidable first lady of body-building Lisa Lyons , his friend and singer Patti Smith , novelists Kathy Acker and Edmund White , and others who inhabit his world.