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The Mapplethorpe Foundation denied an author’s request to use a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of Roy M. Cohn for the cover of a biography about the infamous political fixer, per a report from the New York Times.
According to three people familiar with the Mapplethorpe Foundation’s decision-making who spoke to the Times, the organization’s board was concerned that the inclusion of the photograph on the cover of the biography, American Scoundrel — which was written by Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark — could be interpreted as a political act. The board of the foundation also worried that, if Trump happened to be offended by the cover, he could potentially retaliate and drain their limited resources.
Cohn was a mentor to Trump during the latter’s early days in New York real estate; he also imparted many lessons in press strategy that the president still implements today.
“It’s astonishing that these people are being so cowed, so easily,” Bird, referring to the Mapplethorpe Foundation, told the Times. The author added that he was “thunderstruck” and “outraged” by their decision.
For the cover, Bird and his publisher ultimately selected a photo of Cohn taken by the photographer Britain Hill. Mapplethorpe, known for his iconic and subversive black-and-white portraits of famed 20th-century artists, snapped the disputed photo of Cohn in 1981. In the image, titled simply Roy Cohn, the subject stares directly and menacingly into the camera. The photo shows only his floating head framed against a stark black backdrop.
Mapplethorpe snapped the picture to accompany Steven M.L. Aronson’s profile of Cohn that ran in Andy Warhol‘s Interview magazine. According to Aronson, Cohn loved the portrait and later split a meal with the writer and Mapplethorpe. The Mapplethorpe Foundation eventually gifted the photo to LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Trust in 2011.