Robert Mapplethorpe's photos document a vanishing kind of artistic community

The ways artists connect with each other is changing. Mapplethorpe’s work is a testament to the creative communities of the pastIn the famed summer of 1967, when Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar in Monterey and China exploded the H-bomb, Robert Mapplethorpe met Patti Smith at the ornate headquarters of Scribner’s bookstore in midtown Manhattan. Soon they became inseparable and determined to succeed as artists, Mapplethorpe as a photographer and Smith as a Rimbaud-inspired rock&rsq