Andy Warhol - Photographs 1976 - 1987

In 2007 the Stedelijk Museum organised an exhibition called Andy Warhol - Other voices, other rooms. The exhibition at the Stedelijk opened up more dimensions of Warhol's body of work by making space for 27 of his ventures into film-making, video and audio recordings. [1] The final section of the exhibition showed Warhol's interest in the cutting-edge technology of that era by showing the work he produced for television. Warhol's approach to film seemed ideally suited to his experiments in television, with its emphasis on non-acting and a generous approach to time, allowing us to take in our subjects as leisurely as we might gaze at a painting. In this format he was able to train the camera's voyeuristic gaze on everyone alike, feeding an appetite for trivia and detail.

Many people still think of Andy Warhol in terms of his best-known work which includes screenprints and paintings, such as Marylin Diptych (1962) at the Tate. In this sense we are well-versed in the artist's preoccupation with subjects like the commodification of celebrity versus the limited lifespan of its subjects. His prediction that everyone would have their brief window of fame was also something that we've heard a lot about,  a topic which seems to have reflected the public's rising interest in reality TV. However, until social media like Twitter started to drive news stories from 2007 onwards, it wasn't yet apparent how much the ordinary person would be able to have their own mayfly moment in the sun.

The current exhibition at The Photographer' Gallery promises to show us more of Warhol the photographer, noting that he received his first camera at the age of nine and started developing his pictures in his basement. It also reminds us that Warhol eagerly adopted new tools for his work in a way that suggests that he would be comfortable with our preoccupation with recording and sharing the minutiae of our lives with cameraphone snaps and videos. From his purchase of a Minox compact camera in 1976,  Warhol was rarely without a compact camera about him, excited by the possibilties afforded by the shrinking camera technology and the freedom it afforded him. Photographs 1976 - 1987 marks Warhol’s adoption of the compact camera, an important development in his career-long endeavour to turn image making into a production line.

Andy Warhol

Gay Pride, 1976-87

Silver gelatin print, 8 x 10"

© 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS,

London Courtesy FAIF Collection/Gallery focus21, Switzerland

 

ANDY WARHOL: PHOTOGRAPHS 1976 - 1987 is at The Photographer' Gallery from 17th January to 30th March 2014. The ticket price also includes admission to David Lynch: The Factory Photographs and Taking Shots: The Photography of William S. Burroughs, which are open over the same period.


[1] For a flavour of Warhol's sound and film experiments:
- listen to The Andy Warhol Tapes (1994), Narrated by John Giorno, on Ubuweb here:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/warhol_tapes.html
or  watch Andy Warhol's film Sleep (1963) on Vimeo, length 40 minutes