‘When she started putting her poetry to rock’n’roll, Patti Smith was electric. So I always chose colours – yellow, red, blue – that punctuated that aspect of her’
It was 1977 and I was
shooting Patti Smith for the cover of her album Easter. I was thinking a lot about Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the palette he uses in his painting The Annunciation: white for purity, red for the blood of Christ, blue for the heavens.
Patti brought the white dress, which had been given to her by Robert Mapplethorpe. She brought the red scarf too – she still has it. And one of us threw in the feathers. The blue background is pretty much the exact blue in the Rossetti. That’s not what makes Patti’s eyes pop though. She has Elizabeth Taylor eyes. They always pop.