The intimate portraits in the series Jean-Michel Basquiat Through Nicholas Taylor were taken at Taylor’s apartment late into the night, when he first met Basquiat in New York in 1979. They capture the early moments of a close friendship that was rapidly forming between the two artists, later to become collaborators in the band Gray, founded the same year. The photographs are an expressive insight into both Basquiat’s character and the burgeoning underground scene of 1970s New York. Jean-Michel Basquiat, graffiti artist, painter, poet, musician and producer, who died prematurely at the age of 27 in 1988, has become an iconic figure of his generation. His Neo-Expressionist, Primitivist works reveal his profound sense of conflict between inner and outer experience. Taylor’s portraits give a rare glimpse of this inner world: Basquiat, in the privacy and liberty of the night, reveals a vulnerability, playfulness and youth alongside a profound seriousness. Although these traits characterize his canvases, they emerge in few other photographs of the artist himself.