Lynn Goldsmith – Keith Richards and Patti Hansen, New York, 1981

Lynn Goldsmith’s imagery is in numerous collections: The Smithsonian, The Polaroid Collection, The Kodak Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the permanent collection of Museum Folkwang. She is a multi-awarded portrait photographer whose work has appeared on and between the covers of Life, Newsweek, Time, Rollingstone, Sports Illustrated, People, Elle, Interview, The New Yorker, etc. Her subjects have varied from entertainment personalities to sports stars, from film directors to authors, from the extra-ordinary to the ordinary man on the street.

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Keith Richards and Patti Hansen. Keith had a reputation for showing up at places and later having to be carried out of them. With this in mind, I decided to have the clothes changes on set instead of in the dressing room. I didn’t want him to leave my sign. As I took pictures he changed shirts, assistants changed backgrounds, and the music blasted. Things were going really well. Though he drank a couple of bottles of whiskey and smoked some of the biggest joints I’ve ever seen, he didn’t appear the least bit drunk or stones. Keith had brought his girlfriend, Patti Hansen, who had been watching it all. I asked her to be in some pictures with him. She seemed to float right into his arms. They held each other and started turning in a circle. My assistants and I followed them like a team. It felt as though we were all part of their dance. But something was wrong. I was seeing two Keiths and two Pattis. I excused myself and went into the bathroom. After about an hour, one of the assistants came into the bathroom and saw me lying on the floor. She closed the door and told Keith I was too shy to come out! The session was over. At no time did I ever imagine that breathing the same air as him could be that dangerous. I never thought it would be me, not Keith Richards, who would pass out at the shoot.

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