Andy Warhol, American (1928-1987)
Andy Warhol has
been called “the most visible and often outrageous leader of the Pop Art
movement of the 1960s.” Prolific and diverse, Warhol produced work as a
painter, printmaker, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, photographer, film
maker, and writer. Known by a broad audience for his iconic images of
Warhol acquired
his first Polaroid in the early 1960s, and it became his portable photo booth.
He photographed visitors to his studio, celebrities, objects, and locations,
taking advantage of the flash to smooth out features and details, and rendering
simplified and idealized results from which he could build his prints and
paintings. Warhol’s camera came with him wherever he went, becoming his
sketchbook and more. He commented that “a picture means I know where I was
every minute. That’s why I take pictures, it’s a visual diary.”
The nature of
the Polaroid also appealed to Warhol’s obsessions with the disposable nature of
consumerism and the ready-made object. He produced tens of thousands of these
images during the 1970s and established a rigorous cataloguing system, sorting
and editing them into working albums. By the time of his death in 1987 he had
accumulated more than 66,000 Polaroid photographs and almost 20,000 black and
white photographic prints. In 2008, the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy
Program, run by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, donated
portions of this collection to museums and institutions throughout the