blackwhitegrey250.jpg” title=”blackwhitegrey”>blackwhitegrey250.jpg” alt=”blackwhitegrey” align=”right” hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″ />Gay culture in New York during the 1970s and ’80s is not easy to summarize these many decades later, but “Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe,” an interesting new documentary focusing on the infamous photographer, does a good job of trying.

There was so much of it, for one thing, from lower East side party kids to the (Fire) Island-hopping jet setters, the beautiful people and the Larry Kramers that sourly trashed the beautiful people . . . and, of course, eventually there was AIDS.But New York is, most of all, the ultimate hi-low mix-master city, where just the right wildly diverse group of people can converge at just the right wildly chaotic time, and the results can outdo your most fevered fantasies of glamorous living.

James Crump’s documentary tries mightily to convey some of that glamour in the retelling of the star-crossed love story between photographer Mapplethorpe and his devoted benefactor, the moneyed collector Wagstaff.

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