Marcus Leatherdale, who made classical portraits of Manhattan’s demimonde within the Nineteen Eighties — Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Sydney Biddle Barrows, in any other case referred to as the Mayflower Madam, all made their approach to his Lower East Side studio — died on April 22 at his residence within the state of Jharkhand, India. He was 69.
The trigger was suicide, stated Claudia Summers, his former spouse. His companion of twenty years, Jorge Serio, died in July, and Mr. Leatherdale suffered a stroke quickly after, Ms. Summers stated, including that he had additionally been mourning the demise of the couple’s canine and his mom within the final 12 months.
Mr. Leatherdale was the Cecil Beaton of Downtown Manhattan. He photographed a not-yet-famous membership child named Madonna in her ripped denims and his denim vest. The efficiency artist Leigh Bowery was majestic in a tinseled masks, corset and a merkin. Andy Warhol was a Hamlet in a black turtleneck. Susanne Bartsch, the nightlife impressaria, was a towering presence in crimson leather-based.
The Montreal-born Mr. Leatherdale had already traveled via India and Afghanistan in a van and been to artwork faculty in San Francisco earlier than he landed in New York City in 1978, transferring into the Wild West of the Lower East Side. He and Ms. Summers shared a loft on Grand Street, the place Mr. Leatherdale arrange his studio.
(*69*) was not a conventional marriage, however they had been finest mates, and he was Canadian, so it made life simpler in the event that they wed. His boyfriend for a time was Robert Mapplethorpe, whose images studio he additionally managed. Mr. Leatherdale and Mapplethorpe had been a hanging pair, dressed like twins in leather-based and denim, their faces as if painted by Caravaggio, they usually typically photographed one another.
The Grand Street loft was an uncommon family. Ms. Summers was a dominatrix working underneath the title Mistress Juliette; one of her purchasers cleaned the place free of cost. Mapplethorpe assisted Ms. Summers along with her work by providing her a pair of leather-based pants, a rubber garter belt and S&M ideas. Mr. Leatherdale, sober, tidy and decidedly not onerous core regardless of his leather-based uniform, was mock-annoyed one morning when he awoke to search out an English muffin speared to the kitchen desk with one of Ms. Summers’ stilettos. “What did you get up to last night?” he requested her.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was typically hanging on the market, taking part in his bongo drums; so had been mates like Cookie Mueller, the doomed, gimlet-eyed creator and Details journal contributor who was for a time Mapplethorpe’s and Ms. Summers’ drug supplier, and Kathy Acker, the efficiency artist and novelist. But largely what went on within the loft was Mr. Leatherdale’s work.
For Details journal, a chronicle of downtown Manhattan’s inventive communities — its galleries, golf equipment and boutiques — Mr. Leatherdale had a daily column referred to as Hidden Identities, for which he would contribute veiled portraits of his mates.
He photographed Joey Arias, the husky-voiced drag performer, as a Japanese snow princess. Keith Haring was a rakish Santa Claus. Robin Byrd, the amiable stripper and cable tv host, wore solely her cowboy boots and a thong. Ms. Barrows, christened the Mayflower Madam for her lineage as head of a high-powered Manhattan escort service, wore a ball robe.
When Annie Flanders, Details’s editor (who died in March), pushed Mr. Leatherdale to incorporate these whose fame prolonged above 14th Street, he photographed topics like Jodie Foster, dressing the actress in a satin corset with a pouf skirt, one arm draped throughout her face — an atypical costume for somebody extra at ease in bluejeans.
He photographed Ms. Summers, typically in full dominatrix regalia, a whole lot of occasions.
“His photographs were a celebration of why we moved to New York City in the first place,” she stated, “which was to be in the midst of that kind of creativity and boundary pushing in terms of gender and sexuality. Not that we thought of it that way or spoke in those terms. Marcus photographed the best of who we were, these idealized versions.”
Marcus Andrew Leatherdale was born on Sept. 18, 1952, in Montreal. His father, Jack, was a veterinarian; his mom, Grace Leatherdale, was a homemaker. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute and, as soon as in New York, the School of Visual Arts.
Unlike Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, and to whom he was typically in contrast, and in contrast to many of his topics, Mr. Leatherdale appeared much less centered on his personal fame.
“He didn’t seem to be going for the glory in the same way that Robert was,” stated David Hershkovits, co-founder of Paper journal. “He was more restrained. I don’t feel like he was ever distracted by what anybody else was doing. Shiny objects wasn’t his thing.”
“Robert was determined to be a star, at all costs,” Mr. Leatherdale instructed I-D journal in 2017. “So when I started to be known for my photography, tensions grew.”
He added: “We were artistic comrades, at first, until I got recognition. But in all fairness, NYC is a place where everyone is very career-oriented. I too was very ambitious, but not competitive.”
Yet Mr. Leatherdale, with typical self-deprecation, stated he seen Mapplethorpe because the “more accomplished artist.”
Critics typically lumped the 2 collectively, even years after Mapplethorpe’s demise.
“Marcus Leatherdale’s work has remained somewhat in the shadow of that of his senior colleague, Robert Mapplethorpe,” Holland Cotter wrote in a evaluation of Mr. Leatherdale’s work in 1992. “Both take the nude figure as a central image; both show a penchant for theatrically posed and lighted studio setups. Whereas Mapplethorpe went for a combination of shock and slickness, however, Mr. Leatherdale’s recent work displays an interest in carefully staged tableaux with a symbolic content.”
By the Nineteen Nineties, Mr. Leatherdale was photographing nearly solely in India, making portraits of Hindu holy males, temple beggars, fishermen and pilgrims in the identical elegant, classical method he developed in New York City. He was drawn to the rawness of the life there, and the spirituality, Ms. Summers stated. Later, he started to doc the Adivasis tribes, a far-flung minority inhabitants.
“I want to preserve the tradition of these proud people as best I can, somewhat like Edward Curtis did with the American Indians,” he instructed an interviewer in 2016. “My work can be viewed as anthropological portraiture, even the vintage New York City work of the 1980s.”
With his companion, Mr. Serio, a make-up artist, he made houses in India, New York and Portugal.
Ms. Summers and Mr. Leatherdale divorced in 2018. He is survived by a brother, Robert. Information on different survivors was not out there.
In 2019, Mr. Leatherdale collected his work from the Nineteen Eighties in a present referred to as “Out of the Shadows,” at the Throckmorton Fine Art gallery in Manhattan, and in a e-book of the identical title, written with Ms. Summers. It’s a haunting document of a vanished time and place — collectively, a real memento mori, as Ms. Summers stated, “though we didn’t realize it at the time.”
There is Divine, the star of John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos,” regal in a satin shift, topped in a beehive. There, too, is Ms. Mueller, Tina Chow, Mapplethorpe and others who would quickly be lifeless from AIDS. Stephen Reichard, as soon as a good-looking artwork supplier and guide who preferred to decorate in sharp, costly fits, is bare and skeletal from AIDS, a pieta on a tough wood chair. It was his determination to be photographed this fashion in 1988, and to climb the three flights to Mr. Leatherdale’s loft on his personal, although he struggled. Mr. Reichard died a couple of weeks later.
“I didn’t realize I was archiving an era that was going to be extinct,” Mr. Leatherdale stated lately. “I was just getting by. This is just what we were up to. Of course, you think you will be 20 forever.”
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