1969–1970
Max’s Kansas City and connections in bohemia
Sandy Daley, a filmmaker and photographer living at the Chelsea, takes Mapplethorpe and Smith to Max’s Kansas City, a restaurant and bar where artists, musicians and Andy Warhol’s circle gather; they spend their evenings there until the rock promoter and writer Danny Fields invites them to his table, which both regard as an important breakthrough.
1970
Meets David Croland
On Memorial Day 1970 Mapplethorpe meets the model David Croland, who is staying at the Chelsea Hotel with his friend Tinkerbelle; he at first keeps the affair from Smith, but Tinkerbelle eventually tells her.
1971
Meets John McKendry
Croland introduces Mapplethorpe to John McKendry, curator of photographs and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who becomes his first significant benefactor: through him Mapplethorpe reaches Henry Geldzahler, who introduces him to David Hockney, and the photographer Francesco Scavullo, and later gains access to the museum’s private photography collection, studying works that had never been publicly exhibited.
1972
Meets Sam Wagstaff
Croland introduces Mapplethorpe to the curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, who had grown interested after seeing a Polaroid of him in Croland’s apartment; reserved about the explicit content of the work but impressed by its candour, Wagstaff offers his support, the two become lovers, and Mapplethorpe will later call it love at first sight, after which everything changed for him.
1972
A loft at 24 Bond Street
When Patti Smith moves in with her boyfriend, the musician Allen Lanier, Mapplethorpe can no longer afford their apartment, and Wagstaff gives him $15,000 toward a loft at 24 Bond Street, a short distance from his own; a home and studio of his own let him devote himself more fully to his art.
1973
First solo exhibition, “Don’t Touch Here”
The first solo exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s work opens at the Light Gallery in New York — Polaroids, the title taken from the protective sleeve of a Polaroid print and alluding to Duchamp’s “Prière de toucher”. It follows his growing focus on Polaroid: Wagstaff had given him a Hasselblad with a Polaroid back (by other accounts, the first exhibition, “Polaroid”, took place only in 1976 at the Metropolitan Museum).