A budding photographer who’d recently moved to New York snapped intimate photographs of her lover, nude and relaxing in her Upper West Side apartment. If you’re Paige Powell, this story is made ever more interesting thanks to the fact that her lover happened to be one of the most iconic artists of the last century – Mr. Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Powell revisits her personal photography archive in an ongoing exhibition in New York City, sharing a treasure trove of Basquiat imagery with a gallery audience for the first time. The black-and-white, 35mm photos capture the famously meteoric artist at his most relaxed – reclining on a futon, smoking, doodling and watching cartoons. The exhibition, entitled “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Reclining Nude,” captures a key figure from New York’s transformative art scene in his natural state, while subverting the art historical tradition of the reclining nude from a female muse to a male artist.