Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe (2007) on Netflix

Plot summary

Sam Wagstaff, born in 1921, was an upper-class, handsome, gay man who reinvented himself after World War II as a museum curator, and he met with extraordinary success. He became a trend-setter and a collector of photographs. By the 1970s his friends included photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and poet and musician Patti Smith; his mother had left him a fortune, and he was buying old photographs by the score. The documentary follows his life in order, drawing on interviews, archival footage and photographs, and presents him as Mapplethorpe's lover and guide. Those who comment stress his contribution to art, the discovery of photography, which they say has been largely forgotten.