Marcus Leatherdale (18 September 1952 – 22 April 2022)[1] was a Canadian portrait photographer.
Marcus Andrew Leatherdale was born on 18 September 1952, in Montreal, Canada, to Jack Leatherdale, a veterinarian, and Grace Leatherdale, a homemaker. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute.
Leatherdale arrived in New York City in 1978, where he attended the School of Visual Arts. started his career in New York City during the early eighties, setting up a studio on Grand Street.[2]
Leatherdale first served as Robert Mapplethorpe's office manager for a while and was photographed in the nude by the master, grabbing a rope with his right hand and holding a rabbit in his left.[3]
Thereafter he worked as an assistant curator to Sam Wagstaff. He soon became a darling of the then-vibrant club scene and the fashionable media: Interview, Details, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Elle Decor presented his work. Later on he was featured in artsy publications such as Artforum, Art News, and Art in America. He documented the New York City lifestyle, the extraordinary people of Danceteria and Club 57 where he staged his first exhibits in 1980. Leatherdale was an acute observer of the New York City of the nineteen eighties. His models were the unknown but exceptional ones – like Larissa, Claudia Summers or Ruby Zebra – or well-known artists – like Madonna, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Winston Tong and Divine, Trisha Brown, Lisa Lyon, Andrée Putman, Kathy Acker, Jodie Foster, and fellow photographer John Dugdale. For quite a while Leatherdale remained in Mapplethorpe's shadow, but was soon discovered as a creative force in his own right by Christian Michelides, the founder of Molotov Art Gallery in Vienna. Leatherdale flew to Vienna, presented his work there and was acclaimed by the public and press.
This international recognition paved the way to museums and permanent collections such as the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the London Museum in London, Ontario, and Austria's Albertina. Above all, his arresting portraits of New York City celebrities in the series Hidden Identities aroused long-lasting interest among curators and collectors.
In 1993, Leatherdale began spending half of each year in India's holy city of Banaras. Based in an ancient house in the centre of the old city, he began photographing the diverse and remarkable people there, from the holy men to celebrities, from royalty to tribals, carefully negotiating his way among some of India's most elusive figures to make his portraits. From the outset, he intended to pay homage to the timeless spirit of India through a highly specific portrayal of its individuals. His pictures include princesses and boatmen, movie stars and circus performers, and street beggars and bishops, mothers and children in traditional garb. Leatherdale explored how essentially unaffected much of the country was by the passage of time, and it has been remarked upon that this approach is distinctly post-colonial. In 1999, Leatherdale relocated to Chottanagpur (Jharkhand) where he focused on the Adivasis. Later Serra da Estrela in the mountains of central Portugal became his second home base.
Leatherdale's matte printing techniques, which adapt nineteenth-century processes and employ half black, half sepia colourations, reinforce the timelessness of his subjects. Tones and matte surfaces effectively differentiate his portraits from the easy slickness of fashion photography.
In 2019, Mr. Leatherdale compiled his work from the 80s in a book entitled “Out of the Shadows”, written with Summers.
Leatherdale suffered a stroke in 2021. He committed suicide at the age of 69 on 22 April 2022 at his home in Mcluskieganj, India. He is survived by a brother, Robert, and an adopted son, Kailash.[4]
In 1979, Leatherdale married Claudia Summers. The couple divorced in 2018.
During his time in New York City, he dated Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photography studio Leatherdale managed. His partner of two decades, Jorge Serio, died in July 2021.
In 2010, Marcus Leatherdale founded www.theOMENmag.com a quarterly online Art magazine of which he was the art editor and art director.