I had photographed one of Robert Mapplethorpe's black nude models, Thomas Williams, and he was at my studio picking up some printings when it started to pour outside. I had seen a photograph from a 1960s book on pornography of a muscular black man holding a very white woman as if she were a mannequin. I asked Thomas if he would help me recreate this photo and he agreed. I needed the other half of the picture. I called my friend Whitney, who had her friend Michelle visiting from Detroit. I asked if this female stranger would come immediately to my studio, strip naked, and be held by a muscular, naked Mapplethorpe model.
And that's how I met Michelle.
Four years later she returns with a new boyfriend, a Rastarfarian hairstyle, a shaven pussy, and a pierced nose, nipples and clit hood. I photograph her four times in the coming weeks.
Michelle is completely uninhibited. She works as a stripper, sometimes as a dominatrix. To me she is a modern-day Minoan warrior from the ancient island of Crete. I interviewed her on tape and she told me she prefered women to men, but has made love to very few women, and maybe a half-dozen men. But then she said she has fucked two men at once. I asked her if orgasm is important and she said she demands it.
