Black Book (1986), inscribed to Ken Moody

• Published: St. Martin's Press, New York, 1986
• Contributors: Introductory poem by Ntozake Shange
• Edition: First edition, first printing
• Binding: Black cloth, unclipped photographic dust jacket ($40.00)
• Pages: 96 pp.
• Dimensions: approx. 28.5 x 28 cm (11.25 x 11 in)
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0-312-08302-5
• Signature: Inscribed on the front free endpaper to Ken Moody, "one of my favorite models", signed and dated '87.
• Condition: Near fine in a near fine jacket; mild shelfwear to bottom edge, one small closed tear to jacket.

Black Book gathers Mapplethorpe's studio portraits and nudes of Black men, introduced by a poem by Ntozake Shange. It grew out of a smaller book, Black Males, published in Amsterdam in 1980 with an introduction by Edmund White, and became the most contested work of his career.

The arguments it provoked are part of its meaning. The critic Kobena Mercer first read the photographs as racial fetishism, then returned to them in a later essay to argue that they also unsettle the white gaze they seem to serve. The book remains at the centre of unresolved debates about desire, race and representation.

This copy is inscribed by Mapplethorpe to Ken Moody, a physical trainer and the model he photographed most often between 1983 and 1985, as "one of my favorite models". It joins the photographer and one of the people the book depicts.