Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph of Smith — jacket over shoulder, no makeup, androgynous confidence — demolished gendered expectations for female musicians. It has been called the greatest rock and roll portrait ever taken.
The photograph shows Smith standing against a white wall, wearing a white button-down shirt (a man's shirt, from a Salvation Army thrift store), with a jacket slung over her left shoulder, held by a single finger. She looks directly into the camera with androgynous confidence, her dark hair disheveled, a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Natural light streams in from the left. There is no makeup, no styling, no artifice — or rather, the artifice is in the deliberate construction of anti-glamour as its own form of glamour.
Robert Mapplethorpe, who took the photograph, was Smith's close friend, former lover, and artistic soulmate. They had lived together in the Chelsea Hotel during the early 1970s in what both described as a relationship of profound creative symbiosis. By 1975, Mapplethorpe was developing the precise, classical photographic style that would make him one of the most celebrated and controversial photographers of the 20th century. The Horses photograph is an early masterpiece of his portraiture.
The shoot took place in Mapplethorpe's apartment on a Saturday afternoon. He shot two rolls of film using a Polaroid camera first for lighting tests, then a Hasselblad for the final images. The natural light from the apartment's windows created the soft, even illumination. Smith has described the session as relaxed and intimate — just two friends, one photographing the other.
The image channels multiple cultural references simultaneously: Frank Sinatra's casual cool, Baudelaire's poetic decadence, Keith Richards's swagger, and a complete demolition of the gendered expectations placed on female musicians. In 1975, female rock artists were expected to present themselves as conventionally attractive, sexually available, or both. Smith's androgynous, unapologetic stance — she looks like a poet who happens to be female, or perhaps a beautiful boy, or perhaps something beyond gender entirely — was revolutionary.
Smith herself has said the image represents "an artist in the most transparent way" — unadorned, direct, and fully present. The absence of makeup, costume, or set dressing forces the viewer to engage with Smith as a person and an artist rather than as a gendered object.
The photograph has been called the greatest rock and roll portrait ever taken. It defined Patti Smith's visual identity for her entire career and established a template for women in rock who wanted to be seen as artists first and objects of desire never. Its influence can be traced through every generation of female rock musicians, from Chrissie Hynde and Siouxsie Sioux to PJ Harvey and Phoebe Bridgers. Mapplethorpe went on to become one of the most important photographers of the century; the Horses cover was the work that first brought his portraiture to widespread attention.