Marcus Leatherdale, who made classical portraits of Manhattan’s demimonde within the Eighties — Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Sydney Biddle Barrows, in any other case generally known as the Mayflower Madam, all made their solution to his Decrease East Facet studio — died on April 22 at his dwelling 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 dying of his mom and the couple’s canine 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 purple leather-based.
The Montreal-born Mr. Leatherdale had already traveled by India and Afghanistan in a van and been to artwork college in San Francisco earlier than he landed in New York Metropolis in 1978, transferring into the Wild West of the Decrease East Facet. He and Ms. Summers shared a loft on Grand Avenue, the place Mr. Leatherdale arrange his studio.
Theirs was not a standard marriage, however they had been greatest buddies, and he was Canadian, so it made life simpler in the event that they wed. His boyfriend for a time was Robert Mapplethorpe, whose pictures studio Mr. Leatherdale additionally managed. He and Mapplethorpe had been a putting pair, dressed like twins in leather-based and denim, their faces as if painted by Caravaggio, and so they usually photographed one another.
The Grand Avenue loft was an uncommon family. Ms. Summers was a dominatrix working below the title Mistress Juliette; considered one of her purchasers cleaned the place freed from cost. Mapplethorpe assisted Ms. Summers together 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 laborious 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 considered one of Ms. Summers’ stilettos. “What did you stand up to final night time?” he requested her.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was usually hanging on the market, enjoying his bongo drums; so had been buddies like Cookie Mueller, the doomed, gimlet-eyed creator and Particulars journal contributor who was for a time Mapplethorpe’s and Ms. Summers’ drug seller, and Kathy Acker, the efficiency artist and novelist. However principally what went on within the loft was Mr. Leatherdale’s work.
For Particulars journal, a chronicle of downtown Manhattan’s artistic communities — its galleries, golf equipment and boutiques — Mr. Leatherdale had a daily column known as Hidden Identities, for which he would contribute veiled portraits of his buddies.
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, Particulars’s editor (who died in March), pushed Mr. Leatherdale to incorporate these whose fame prolonged above 14th Avenue, 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 comfy in bluejeans.
He photographed Ms. Summers, usually in full dominatrix regalia, a whole lot of occasions.
“His images had been a celebration of why we moved to New York Metropolis within the first place,” she stated, “which was to be within the midst of that sort of creativity and boundary pushing by way of gender and sexuality. Not that we considered it that method or spoke in these phrases. Marcus photographed one of the best of who we had been, these idealized variations.”
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 Artwork Institute and, as soon as in New York, the Faculty of Visible Arts.
In contrast to Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, and to whom he was usually in contrast, and in contrast to a lot of his topics, Mr. Leatherdale appeared much less targeted on his personal fame.
“He didn’t appear to be going for the glory in the identical method that Robert was,” stated David Hershkovits, co-founder of Paper journal. “He was extra restrained. I don’t really feel like he was ever distracted by what anyone else was doing. Shiny objects wasn’t his factor.”
“Robert was decided to be a star, in any respect prices,” Mr. Leatherdale instructed I-D journal in 2017. “So after I began to be recognized for my pictures, tensions grew.”
He added: “We had been inventive comrades, at first, till I received recognition. However in all equity, NYC is a spot the place everybody may be very career-oriented. I too was very bold, however not aggressive.”
But Mr. Leatherdale, with typical self-deprecation, stated he considered Mapplethorpe because the “extra achieved artist.”
Critics usually lumped the 2 collectively, even years after Mapplethorpe’s dying.
“Marcus Leatherdale’s work has remained considerably within the shadow of that of his senior colleague, Robert Mapplethorpe,” Holland Cotter wrote in a overview of Mr. Leatherdale’s work in 1992. “Each take the nude determine as a central picture; each present a penchant for theatrically posed and lighted studio setups. Whereas Mapplethorpe went for a mixture of shock and slickness, nevertheless, Mr. Leatherdale’s latest work shows an curiosity in fastidiously staged tableaux with a symbolic content material.”
By the 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 Metropolis. 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 need to protect the custom of those proud folks as greatest I can, considerably like Edward Curtis did with the American Indians,” he instructed an interviewer in 2016. “My work could be considered as anthropological portraiture, even the classic New York Metropolis work of the Eighties.”
Together with his companion, Mr. Serio, a make-up artist, he made properties in India, New York and Portugal.
Ms. Summers and Mr. Leatherdale divorced in 2018. He’s survived by a brother, Robert. Info on different survivors was not out there.
In 2019, Mr. Leatherdale collected his work from the Eighties in a present known as “Out of the Shadows,” on the Throckmorton Tremendous Artwork gallery in Manhattan, and in a e-book of the identical title, written with Ms. Summers. It’s a haunting file of a vanished time and place — collectively, a real memento mori, as Ms. Summers stated, “although we didn’t notice it on the time.”
There’s 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 useless from AIDS. Stephen Reichard, as soon as a good-looking artwork seller and advisor 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 just a few weeks later.
“I didn’t notice I used to be archiving an period that was going to be extinct,” Mr. Leatherdale stated just lately. “I used to be simply getting by. That is simply what we had been as much as. In fact, you assume you can be 20 ceaselessly.”
