PAST EXHIBITION
Andy Warhol Photographs
September 13, 2008—October 18, 2008

Press Release

From 1970 through 1987, Andy Warhol took scores of Polaroid and black-and-white photographs, the vast majority of which were never seen by the public. These images often served as the basis for his commissioned portraits, silk-screen paintings, drawings, and prints. In 2007, to commemorate its twentieth anniversary, the Warhol Foundation launched the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program. Designed to give a broad public greater access to Warhol's photographs, the program donated Warhol's original Polaroids and gelatin silver prints to museums across the country, including 149 to the UH University Art Collection. Andy Warhol's photographs at Blaffer Gallery will showcase the outstanding group of photographs that the university has added to their collection and will contextualize the images within Andy Warhol's artistic practice and tell the stories behind the captivating pictures.

A wealth of information about Warhol’s process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images. Strikingly evident is the intense, though perhaps brief, emotional engagement Warhol had with these individuals. His attraction to their beauty, fascination with their power, or interest in their personae is palpable. So too are their reactions to Warhol. While some figures display relative ease in front of the camera, others present a stiff and studied countenance that appears unaffected by Warhol’s instructions to turn this way or that, to look over a shoulder, or to pose with the hands. Warhol positioned his sitters in a variety of similar, classical poses, over and over again, striving to obtain the perfect composition that matched their personalities, revealed their best features, and preserved them at their finest. By presenting both studio Polaroids and black-and-white snapshots side by side, Andy Warhol's photographs will allow viewers to move back and forth between moments of Warhol’s “art”, “work”, and “life” — inseparable parts of a fascinating whole.

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