Without question, Robert Mappelthorpe is the photographer with which poet, writer and musician Patti Smith will always most closely be associated. As his working partner, lover and lifetime confidant, Smith beautifully chronicled their relationship in the award-winning memoir Just Kids; Mappelthorpe, for his part, shot the now-iconic cover portrait for Smith’s debut album, Horses.
Meanwhile, Smith’s relationship with photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who three years after Horses shot the cover for Smith’s commercial breakthrough Easter, is the subject of another book, Before Easter After (Rizzoli; $65). Combining Goldsmith’s striking color portraits with Smith’s poetry and reflections of the era, it chronicles a secondary but no less important relationship between Smith and the camera lens.
On the heels of Smith’s appearance at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, she and Goldsmith appear Monday in a conversation moderated by KQED contributor Emma Silvers. Along with Goldsmith’s photography and the pair’s stories of a pivotal era, the night also marks the public reopening of the Calvin Simmons Theatre, located in Oakland’s historic Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, after a renovation.
Patti Smith and Lynn Goldsmith appear in conversation on Monday, Oct. 7, at the Calvin Simmons Theatre in Oakland. Details here.