Synopsis
This month the National Portrait Gallery opens its doors to the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. As the epitome of New York style he is less celebrated for his portraits than for the notorious photographs that chronicled the chic gay world of Manhattan. In this exclusive film profile of the man and the people whose fast-track existence he chronicled, Arena talks to the formidable first lady of body-building, Lisa Lyons; his friend, the singer Patti Smith; novelists Kathy Acker and Edmund White; and others who inhabit his world