What do you think?
Rate this book
Lady, Lisa Lyon
MAPPLETHORPE, ROBERT. Lisa Lyon, first edition, quarto, Viking, 1983, pp. 128, black matte boards, blind-stamped, duotone photos of Lisa Lyon, the bodybuilder and model, with text by Bruce Chatwin. Fine but for a price-clipped dust jacket. “Erotic work of women, like bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, straddles the line between formal beauty and sexual objectification,” says the critic Robert Hirsch in his discussion of Mapplethorpe in “Seizing the Light.” “Mapplethorpe’s flawless ordered and crafted images are built, like our own society, on conflict and contradiction.” These photos were made over two years in various locales, indoors and out.
- GenresPhotographyArt
128 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 1983
1 person is currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Chatwin
66 books674 followersCharles Bruce Chatwin was an English novelist and travel writer. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill (1982).
In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted. "I've always wanted to go there," Bruce told her. "So have I," she replied, "go there for me." Two years later in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later. When he arrived, he left the newspaper with a telegram: "Have gone to Patagonia." He spent six months in the area, a trip which resulted in the book In Patagonia (1977). This work established his reputation as a travel writer. Later, however, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were alleged to have been fictionalised.
Later works included a novel based on the slave trade, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which he researched with extended stays in Benin, West Africa. For The Songlines (1987), a work combining fiction and non-fiction, Chatwin went to Australia. He studied the culture to express how the songs of the Aborigines are a cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man's personal story. He also related the travelling expressed in The Songlines to his own travels and the long nomadic past of humans. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, his novel On the Black Hill (1982) was set closer to home, in the hill farms of the Welsh Borders. It focuses on the relationship between twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin, who grow up isolated from the course of twentieth century history. Utz (1988), was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain.
Chatwin was working on a number of new ideas for future novels at the time of his death from AIDS in 1989, including a transcontinental epic, provisionally titled Lydia Livingstone.
In 1972, Chatwin interviewed the 93-year-old architect and designer Eileen Gray in her Paris salon, where he noticed a map of the area of South America called Patagonia, which she had painted. "I've always wanted to go there," Bruce told her. "So have I," she replied, "go there for me." Two years later in November 1974, Chatwin flew out to Lima in Peru, and reached Patagonia a month later. When he arrived, he left the newspaper with a telegram: "Have gone to Patagonia." He spent six months in the area, a trip which resulted in the book In Patagonia (1977). This work established his reputation as a travel writer. Later, however, residents in the region contradicted the account of events depicted in Chatwin's book. It was the first time in his career, but not the last, that conversations and characters which Chatwin presented as fact were alleged to have been fictionalised.
Later works included a novel based on the slave trade, The Viceroy of Ouidah, which he researched with extended stays in Benin, West Africa. For The Songlines (1987), a work combining fiction and non-fiction, Chatwin went to Australia. He studied the culture to express how the songs of the Aborigines are a cross between a creation myth, an atlas and an Aboriginal man's personal story. He also related the travelling expressed in The Songlines to his own travels and the long nomadic past of humans. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, his novel On the Black Hill (1982) was set closer to home, in the hill farms of the Welsh Borders. It focuses on the relationship between twin brothers, Lewis and Benjamin, who grow up isolated from the course of twentieth century history. Utz (1988), was a novel about the obsession that leads people to collect. Set in Prague, the novel details the life and death of Kaspar Utz, a man obsessed with his collection of Meissen porcelain.
Chatwin was working on a number of new ideas for future novels at the time of his death from AIDS in 1989, including a transcontinental epic, provisionally titled Lydia Livingstone.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 10, 2008
Lisa Lyons was the very first womens' champion bodybuilder in the early Eighties, so Robert Mapplethorpe photographed an entire portfolio of her portraying various personae: Circus Girl, Dominatrix, Black Widow, Biker, and many nudes, etc. The results are mixed: some pictures are well done and some look like amateur hour at flick*r, but Lyon is a good model. Check it out!
June 8, 2025
A fairly unlikely combination of a woman body builder from LA and a famous photographer from NYC known for flowers and gay erotica, this book shows several sessions that Mapplethorpe did with Lyon, some on the beach, many in studio, others on location. He celebrates her mixture of masculinity and femininity, often in the same shots. Many are highly alluring, while some are fairly typical nudie pics. At his best (in my view the hazy nudes in studio with a blank white backdrop), they are simple and elegant, with a nod to some of his most famous work.
September 9, 2023
I was quite fascinated with Lisa Lyon back in 1983 and fond of Mapplethorpe's collection of photographs of her, as well. Fran gave me the book, and I still have it on the shelf today. I pulled it out and flipped through the pages after I heard of Lyon's death today. She was a rather remarkable figure, and it is sad that she is gone already.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews