Andy Warhol

Photography was embedded in Warhol’s practice from its earliest mature phase. His silkscreen paintings depended on photographic sources, but photography also became an independent activity through Polaroids, 35mm snapshots, portraits, street scenes, social documentation, and serial observations. The camera allowed Warhol to collect images continuously, collapsing distinctions between private experience, celebrity culture, daily life, source material, and finished artwork. As Stephen Koch emphasizes in the catalogue, photography sat at the center of the visual strategy that allowed Warhol to transform existing images into immediately recognizable icons.

Published by Robert Miller Gallery in 1987, Andy Warhol: Photographs presents black-and-white photographs in an austere grid-based design that reinforces the serial character of Warhol’s vision. Edited and designed by John Cheim, the catalogue was issued in distinctive yellow boards without a dust jacket and accompanied a Robert Miller Gallery exhibition. Its concentrated format makes it an important early publication devoted specifically to Warhol’s photographic practice, produced in the final year of his life.