Lynn Goldsmith has worked on many things. He was part of the Elektra Records staff, directed documentaries, managed rock groups, composed songs and had a band. But he always carried his camera with him. With it he has built a portfolio that can only be described as impressive. It contains snapshots of politicians, writers, artists and musicians: Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Talking Heads, the Stones, Bob Marley or The Police. As she says, her camera has given her the opportunity to travel (in 1988 she published a report on Spain, the book A Day in the Life of Spain) and treating people he admires. Among those people, she occupies a special place, whom she has known since 1975. “The people she frequented then were also my tribe; When we see each other I am with a lifelong friend,” says Goldsmith. Just one day before this interview took place, both flew to Chicago to present (Rizzoli), a book that compiles some of the photographs he took of the artist, many of them unpublished. “Having her in front of the goal was a breath of fresh air. At that time, many people felt uncomfortable when they had to pose, they entered the studio as if the dentist were going to extract a tooth. Patti was the exact opposite. I had grown up seeing numbers Vogue French, from Italian, and that helped her see herself as a teenager. “He knew how to face the camera, how to position his body.”
Robert Mapplethorpe signed the iconic cover of (1975), Smith’s debut album, which changed the rules of the game regarding the image that a woman could project on the cover of a rock album. But we must not forget that Goldsmith is the author of the image that defines Easter (1978), album containing Because the Night. Dressed in a backwards nightgown, Smith posed with her arms raised, without looking at the camera, revealing one of her unshaven armpits. “Clive Davis [director del sello Arista] He wanted to remove the hair, but Patti’s contract gave him complete control over his image. The photo was used as I made it. She was not a conventional sex symbol. He did not shave his armpits or legs and in that image he showed himself as he is, he did not hide anything. In her previous albums she was more androgynous, but Patti was very feminine, so that was what I tried to reflect on that cover.”
The material collected in Before Easter After It basically comes from sessions from the seventies, the period in which Smith broke out from the underground New Yorker and then, meteorically, rewrite the role of women in rock & roll. The changes he imposed were not only aesthetic. Smith was not a simple singer, she was a poet who had discovered that her declamatory style had the rhythm and passion of rock, and decided to merge the two. “Before Patti appeared there were already women playing instruments and singing, but none of them were like her. She came accompanied by her poetic talent and her first album shocked critics who until then had only seen something like that in Dylan.” The second half of the seventies was his, until in 1979 he announced that he was retiring to start a family with the musician Fred Sonic Smith, with whom he lived until his sudden death in 1994.
The book shows how Goldsmith was able to capture his magnetism. Patti Smith in military pants, a white T-shirt and a belt, in her role as a rock & roll quarterback. Dressed in clothes that Joe Strummer gave her. With flowers in her hair and a white robe, priestess of a pagan religion. “It was a constant creative exchange. Some images were not made to be published, but when we started to select we said, look!” Before Easter After It more than meets one of the photographer’s premises: “Music helps us feel our humanity. If I am able to contribute something that enhances that connection, that is when I feel that my work has succeeded.”
