2015, a hot July afternoon in Portugal, my longtime friend Marcus Leatherdale and I were digging for memories in some of his old boxes — packed away many moons ago in New York City. Invitations to parties from Andy Warhol, notebooks with appointments to shoot everyone from Keith Haring to Debbie Harry for the original (and cool) Details Magazine emerged — all great fodder for the new biography of Marcus we’ve begun: What’s Left of Leatherdale.

As the afternoon waned and the arid heat started to mix with a protracted silence and many nose-fuls of New York City dust, we reached the bottom of the last box to find a crumpled envelope containing some kind of plastic sleeves and colour transparencies. We took the mangled stack to the window, and there he was — a young Robert Mappelthorpe, the same one from Marcus’s infamous black and white, in living colour, looking straight at us.

Meticulously conserved, restored and now printed larger than life — these never-before-seen images are available to see (and buy) at  Roman Zangief – 40 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010 • 28 March – 7 April, 2017.