A portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which James R. Miller claims is his own work, not Mapplethorpe’s. (screenshot by the author via guggenheim.org)
According to Miller’s lawsuit, he shot the four disputed images on the night of November 22, 1979, at Mapplethorpe’s Bond Street loft. Miller met Mapplethorpe there to interview him. Later in the evening Miller persuaded Mapplethorpe to let him make him up and dress him in a feminine way. According to Miller’s lawsuit, he tended to Mapplethorpe’s makeup, hair, and costume, adjusted the lighting in the room, and then took 12 photos of Mapplethorpe. Miller left the undeveloped film with Mapplethorpe, who said he would have his studio assistant develop it. Miller never received the developed photos, but later discovered that four of the images from that roll of film were being shown as self-portraits by Mapplethorpe. The four photos in question show Mapplethorpe wearing typically feminine makeup. In one, he appears bare-chested facing the camera; in the three others — one taken head on, the two others in profile — he sports a fur collar.
“Mr. Miller was not aware of the misattribution of his work until the July 1988 Whitney Museum exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work,” Miller’s lawyer, Edward F. Westfield, told Hyperallergic by email. “Mr. Miller has attempted several times over the last 27 years to correct the historical and artistic record of the subject photographs, and has been repeatedly rebuffed by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, leaving him with no recourse other than to pursue his rights in litigation.”
Miller and Westfield are seeking a juried trial. Their complaint includes a copy of a Certificate of Registration dated March 8, 2016, from the US Copyright Office, giving Miller copyright to the set of four images dubbed “Mapplethorpe in drag.”
