When Patti Smith first met Judy Linn they were two young artists just starting out on their careers. It was one-nine-six-eight. Smith was a poet, born in Chicago, then raised in New Jersey. She’d worked in a factory, had given birth to a daughter in ‘67, given her up for adoption, moved to New York, where she met a young man called Robert Mapplethorpe.
Linn was a photographer, born in Detroit, who had come to New York to study at the Pratt Institute. She showed great promise, a natural flair, a real talent. She graduated with BFA in 1969.
After they met, these two young women worked together, collaborated, daydreamed, conspired to change the world. Some people set themselves goals. Write them down. Make a plan. Put the plan into action. Linn took photographs of the movies she and Smith created in their heads. It was the start of making their dreams real.
They were living in Chelsea Hotel. Linn was making money taking pictures for papers and magazines. Smith was working in a bookshop supporting Mapplethorpe.
Linn photographed Smith “because she was taking photographs of everything.”
Patti posed for Judy because:
I was eager to be Judy’s model and to have the opportunity to work with a true artist. I felt protected in the atmosphere we created together. We had an inner narrative, producing our own unspoken film, with or without a camera.”
We were two girls with no one to please.
Linn and Smith chose props and clothes to create their pictures. Some looked posed. Some look like they captured a moment of spontaneous intimacy. Unselfconsciously caught off-guard. Each picture presents an image of emotional truth. We’re in that moment with them, wondering what happens next. Here’s where their future began.
More of Judy Linn’s photographs of Patti Smith, after the jump…
