Andy Warhol’s circle of celebrity friends and artists has arguably become almost as famous as his artworks themselves. Luckily for us, he had an almost obsessive habit of snapping pictures of the faces that passed through the Factory, rarely seen without his trusty camera (which he would come to refer to as his “date”). A selection of these pictures is set to be displayed as part of an upcoming exhibition at NeueHouse in Hollywood, featuring 120 images, including 20 that have never been exhibited before.
Titled Andy Warhol: Photo Factory, the show — curated in collaboration with Fotografiska, Hedges Projects, and Jack Shainman Gallery — will trace the development of Warhol’s photography over the course of his career, beginning with photobooth film strips that served as source material for many of his iconic silkscreen portraits.
Photo Factory will also include famed polaroids capturing fellow artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, alongside other icons of the era, such as Debbie Harry and Grace Jones. The likes of Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick will also appear, courtesy of the artist’s legendary “screen tests” from the 1960s. Rarer gelatin silver prints, meanwhile, focus on smaller-scale subjects, such as hotel lobbies, room service trays, and single objects.
Thousands of Warhol’s photographs have been made public by the Andy Warhol Foundation over the last few years, amid a wide-ranging reevaluation of his prescient use of the medium. In 2020, many were also auctioned off by the foundation to help provide relief for artists during the coronavirus pandemic.
If digital art is more your thing, five Andy Warhol NFTs recently hit the auction block for $3 million, after being “brought back to life” and minted from the restored and preserved files of his 1985 Machine Made collection.
Andy Warhol: Photo Factory will open to the public at NeueHouse Hollywood on June 16, for a 40-day run. The exhibition is then scheduled to travel to New York’s Fotografiska in autumn 2021, Stockholm in 2022, and Tallinn, Estonia, in 2023.
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