Lloyd Ziff

“It’s really easy to take a mean, nasty picture of someone, and really difficult to take a loving picture of someone,” a professor once told Lloyd Ziff in the earliest days of his photography career—a sentiment that influences the artist to this day. A student at Pratt Institute in the 1960s, Ziff studied graphic design and took a course in photography, which led him to photograph fellow student Robert Mapplethorpe and his girlfriend, Patti Smith, in the now-iconic images that are credited as the first portraits ever taken of the legendary couple. In addition to photography, Ziff is known for his award-winning art direction for leading magazines like Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Condé Nast Traveler, and album cover design for the likes of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Ziff also creates photography books, including his forthcoming New York/Los Angeles.