This is an iconic image: a photograph of Patti Smith created by Robert Mapplethorpe for the cover of her debut album Horses. It and the album are classics.

I'm finishing up Patti's book, Just Kids. In it she writes about the creation of this image. It's too good to not share.

There was never any question that Robert would take the portrait for the cover of Horses, my aural sword sheathed with Robert's image. I had no sense of how it would look, just that it should be true.

We never talked about what we would do, or what it would look like. He would shoot it. I would be shot.
   I had my look in mind. He had his light in mind. That is all.

   The clouds kept moving back and forth. Something happened with his light meter and he became slightly agitated. He took a few shots. He abandoned the light meter. A cloud went by and the triangle disappeared. He said, "You know, I really like the whiteness of the shirt. Can you take the jacket off?"
   I flung my jacket over my shoulder, Frank Sinatra style. I was full of references. He was full of light and shadow.
   "It's back," he said.
   He took a few more shots.
   "I got it."
   "How do you know?"
   "I just know."
   He took twelve pictures that day.
   Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the magic," he said.
   When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.

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