By 1983, Tom Arndt was a few years into a project that consumed most of his life: creating a photographic portrait of American culture. He had lived through the hippie era, and at the dawn of the nineteen-eighties he thought he detected something new. Arndt had travelled to New York to photograph the 1981 ticker-tape parade that celebrated the release of American hostages held in Iran, which had coincided with the Inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. He told me that he remembers thinking, “This is a new kind of patriotism. This is not anti-Vietnam protests, or the generation that I was part of. This is balls-out ‘God Bless America.’ ”

Arndt decided to follow the national mood wherever it led, making portraits that found a home not in the world of journalism but in that of fine art, on the walls of galleries and museums. He returned to the Midwest, where he had grown up, and set about documenting the lives of farmers, homeless people, Holocaust survivors, politicians. He was living in Minneapolis when he heard about something interesting happening in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn, in the suburb of Bloomington, and decided to drive over with his cameras, a pair of Contax RTSIIs. A television-news crew captured the scene. “The lure of the movies drew them in droves,” the reporter said. “They were all hoping to land an extra role in a new movie called ‘Purple Rain,’ starring Prince, the Minneapolis rock star who has achieved national prominence.”

“Purple Rain,” the film and the associated album, arrived the next year; combined, they established Prince as something more than a mere rock star. He was suddenly a national obsession, a polarizing figure who was transformed, over the decades, into a consensus favorite. Especially since his death, a decade ago this week, he has come to be widely and rightly regarded as one of the greatest figures in the history of popular music. But, on that day in Bloomington, Arndt encountered not a frenzied mob but a calm and quiet group, eager to be photographed by the people working for the film-production company, and willing, in some cases, to be photographed by him. (Arndt was careful to tell everyone that he had no connection to Prince.) He shot portraits for a few hours and then went home, feeling that they hadn’t turned out terribly well. “I did my best, and I didn’t think much of them,” he said. “If I had a delete button, I probably would have erased them—that’s why I’m grateful to be shooting film.”

He added the negatives to his voluminous collection and kept working, and didn’t even think to print contact sheets until last year, when he found himself curious about his afternoon among the “Purple Rain” hopefuls. He’d shot mostly closeups, emphasizing the faces and deëmphasizing the clothes, in hopes that the portraits would look timeless. But, when he looks at the images now, he is struck by how vividly they evoke 1983. “They are specifically anchored in that moment,” he said.

A number of Arndt’s subjects appear to be trying to dress like Prince, though this is not an easy assignment. On the record sleeve of his 1978 début album, “For You,” Prince poses shirtless in bed, with an acoustic guitar and his hair teased into an afro, like a seductive folk singer. But, in the years that followed, he borrowed from punk and New Wave, mixing jackets and trenchcoats with frills and lace and lingerie, slipping between styles and identities. The critic Nelson George, in an insightful and provocative book, “The Death of Rhythm & Blues,” published in 1988, wrote that not everyone enjoyed Prince’s slipperiness, and suggested that, by emphasizing racial ambiguity (for instance, through his “consistent use of mulatto and white leading ladies” in films and music videos), Prince “aided those who saw blackness as a hindrance in the commercial marketplace by running from it.” Nowadays, of course, no one questions Prince’s place in the pantheon of Black musicians, but in order to appreciate the magnitude of his imagination and his influence it’s important to remember how controversial he once seemed, and how confusing.

Arndt tried, above all, to be respectful of those young people gathered in the parking lot. “There were kids who were just in their underwear, and I didn’t photograph them,” he said. But his image of a young woman in hot pants, wielding a whip, captured the exuberant spirit of dress-up that predominated that day. The words “Prince” and “Purple Rain” evidently summoned forth a wide range of aspiring actors, and a wide range of styles; taken as a whole, they constitute a jumbled-up tribute to a performer who loved to keep people guessing. To one guy, dressing the part meant a sleek, light-colored sports coat. To another, it meant a fresh Jheri curl and a popped-collar jean jacket—state-of-the-art R. & B. mixed with old-fashioned rock and roll. One woman epitomizes punk chic in a beret and a spiked necklace. Two others are carefully layered and accessorized, perfecting the kind of theatrical eighties glamour that more or less disappeared with the end of the decade.

At one point in the afternoon, Arndt entered the hotel to find a bathroom, and bumped into Prince himself, accompanied by his bodyguard Charles (Big Chick) Huntsberry, who made Prince look even tinier than he was. But mainly he remembers the afternoon as a low-key get-together, despite the fashion. He has watched “Purple Rain” more than once, and never recognized anyone from the parking lot, which felt less like a would-be movie set and more like a local hangout. “I think that these portraits are very Minnesota,” he told me. “It’s not that they’re humble. They’re just quieter. If this was in Brooklyn, this casting call, it would be different.”