A couple of months ago -- after having read Patti Smith's Just Kids, her book about her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe -- I was approached by a friend on Twitter about producing an homage to the highly influential Robert Mapplethorpe. Always up for an excuse to make beautiful photographs, I said yes.

While I don't really shoot in the style that Mapplethorpe is most renowned for, his imagery has had an influence over me for as long as I can remember. It's iconic and poignant. There's no escaping his influence if you're photographing the human body. It was an honor to let his work inspire me.

I'll spare you the details of the actual production and post-production that went into these shots. One thing I do want to mention is that all of the people in these images agreed to do it via Twitter. That's a pretty damn cool use of social media.

Personally, these images fill me with intense awe and infinite sadness. A lot like Mapplethorpe's images do. These are some of the most beautiful images I have ever made. They also stirred up lots of personal crap. Either way, I'm extremely proud of the photographs and am very happy to be on this side of them now, personally and creatively.

Here's the gallery. Not safe for work (NSFW), natch.

PROJECT: MAPPLETHORPE HOMAGE

Patti Smith, from the book Just Kids, after having visited the Museum of Art in Philadelphia for the first time at the age of 12:

I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

Just Kids is the story of Patti Smith, one of the greatest performers in music, and Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most significant and controversial photographers of our time.

This book, however, chronicles their lives before the fame and recognition. Patti and Robert are two fledgling kids living in New York City and full of a longing to live a creative life full of unconditional love and support.

   I was particularly moved by the drawing he had done on Memorial Day. I had never seen anything like it. What also struck me was the date: Joan of Arc's feast day. The same day I had promised to make something of myself before her statue.
   I told him this, and he responded that the drawing was symbolic of his own commitment to art, made on the same day. He gave it to me with out hesitation and I understood in this small space of time we had mutually surrended our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

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.