Two Times Intro

August 29, 2011
Michael Stipe, REM frontman and rock star legend in his own right, becomes a self-declared “dork nerd” when talking about Patti Smith. “I first met Patti Smith in the autumn of 1975.... Somebody had left a music magazine, Cream, under the desk there was a haunting photograph of a young Patti Smith, leaning against a wall, staring down the camera, all scary and beautiful.” In Stipe’s startling photographs and 12 brief written homages, Patti Smith is depicted as a down-to-earth goddess, a part of and apart from her evolving entourage of musicians, artists, poets (Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance), and friends. This isn’t a traditional book of portraits—the images are eerie, smudged, and only a few are of Patti Smith herself. The subjects are rarely identified; there are no captions, and the book has no page numbers. A disproportionate number of the photographs are set in bathrooms. The overwhelming mood is one of disjunction, claustrophobia, exhaustion, temporariness—and the effect is raw and intimate. The photo of Stipe braiding Smith’s hair is representative: she giggles shyly, looking years younger than her chronological age. And he is no longer the “dork nerd” teenager, but a fellow musician—and from his proud, caring mien, even a protector.