Harpers & Queen

February 2006
Pages 90 & 91

It’s All About

Photography
Pop shots

A new exhibition unveils unseen Polaroids from Andy Warhol’s collection. Here, four of his famous subjects revisit the snaps that captured the spirit of hip New York.
From 27 January, a collection of unique, previously unseen prints by the master of pop art Andy Warhol will be on show at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in London. Warhol, often credited as the inventor of the modern obsession with celebrity, captured the great and the good of 1970s and early-1980s New York with his Polaroid camera. The photographs, sometimes used as studies for later paintings, are touchingly unstaged and, in their spontaneity, embody the spirit of the time. Here we invite some of those photographed to share their experience of spending time with an artworld icon.
‘Warhol’s World: Photography & Television’ is at Hauser & Wirth, 196a Piccadilly, London W1 (020 2787 2300), from 27 January.

‘This shot of me was taken by Andy at the Factory on Union Square. It was part of the session for a portrait he did later on. The things I most remember from looking at all these photos taken by Andy was the tremendous ease he had with all kinds of people, and the fact that when Andy was alive, the nightlife was really so easy, and how we never wanted to miss anything’ Debbie Harry