One day in 1981, Prince Rogers Nelson, wearing a high-collared white button-down shirt, black pants, and suspenders, gazed straight into the lens of Lynn Goldsmith’s camera. He was on his way to superstardom, three years away from the colossal success of Purple Rain. Goldsmith, a court filing would later state, was on assignment for Newsweek. She worked with the lighting to emphasize the artist’s bone structure. She applied eyeshadow and lip gloss on him. She aimed to capture his “willing[ness] to bust through what must be [his] immense fears to make the work that [he] wanted to [make].” She took a series of black-and-white shots using a Nikon 35-mm camera.
Prince, Goldsmith would later recall, seemed nervous and uncomfortable, and left the shoot before she could take additional photos. She came out of the session with 23 images – 11 in color and 12 in black and white. Among the black-and-white photos was the image which, 40 years later, would become the center of a lengthy legal battle, rising all the way to the Supreme Court.
