A New Muse: Robert Mapplethorpe and Lisa Lyon

“I’d never seen anybody that looked like that before. Once she took her clothes off, it was like seeing something from another planet.”_{– Robert Mapplethorpe on Lisa Lyon}

Robert Mapplethorpe met Lisa Lyon, the first World Women’s BodyBuilding Champion, at a party in SoHo in 1979 where her black rubber outfit caught Mapplethorpe’s eye. At the time, Mapplethorpe, who had garnered the attention of the art world for his explicit gay and sadomasochistic photographs, was searching for a new project so as not to be pinned down with a reputation for creating artworks only for their shock value. Their meeting allowed Mapplethorpe to continue exploring classical body ideals while broadening his view to the female form and sparked a photographic collaboration, which lasted six years. Here Jessica Hunter, our photographs and photobooks cataloguer, explores the pair’s artistic relationship.