Patti Smith and Photographer Lynn Davis on Their Enduring Friendship With Robert Mapplethorpe

Back to the summer of 1967, to one of many arrivals. The bus to Port Authority, the subway to Brooklyn, and, finally, the room with the curly-haired boy. As Smith wrote in her award-winning 2010 memoir, Just Kids, “It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me.”

“I remember almost everything,” Davis says, speaking to Vanity Fair last month about “Paths That Cross,” an exhibition that features work by Davis, Smith, and Mapplethorpe, opening…