Andy Warhol, one of the pioneers of pop art, was obsessed with documenting his immediate reality. For him, the mundane could become magical, photographing a simple sign board would be treated with the same care as a portrait of one of his celebrity friends.
Thousands of unseen photographs released by the Andy Warhol Foundation will be made available to the public in September. The project, Contact Warhol, is headed by Peggy Phelan and Richard Meyer of Stanford University, after the university acquired access to over 130,000 contact sheets from the foundation. After analyzing these photographs for Warhol’s shorthand, a circle to approve and an “x” to reject an image, researchers discovered the artist only published 17% of his work - leaving us a treasure trove of images to enjoy today!
These photographs, taken in the last ten years of the artist’s life (from 1976 – 1987), are in the process of being digitized and will be shown at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center on September 29th. They feature his friends, celebrities and lovers, from Truman Capote, to Basquiat, to Warhol’s last boyfriend Jon Gould.