Robert Mapplethorpe Lisa Lyon, 1982

I had never seen a woman like that before. It was like looking at someone from another planet. — Robert Mapplethorpe

When Robert Mapplethorpe met Lisa Lyon — the first World Women’s Bodybuilding Champion — at a party in 1979, he was captivated by the incongruity between her masculine musculature and feminine features. The two collaborated on a series of over two hundred photographs, a selection of which were shown at documenta 7 in 1982 and published in the book Lady: Lisa Lyon the following year. Embodying what they termed ‘a succession of fantasies’, in these images Lyon ‘escape[d] the shackles of womanly stereotype’, transforming her body into a symbol of female strength.