Before Instagram, Andy Warhol Took Polaroids
Millennials might be obsessed with self-documentation, but they pale in comparison to Andy Warhol. The artist had the habit of shooting a full roll of film a day, taking photos of his most famous friends and himself. He kept and used an array of cameras, but most often preferred to stick to the dependable, white-bordered format of the Polaroid. After all, uniformity fascinated him, and when viewed in one place, his shots are as striking in their repetition as rows of Campbell’s Soup.
That’s particularly apparent in Andy Warhol: Polaroids, a 500-plus-page compendium of his snapshots being published by Taschen in September. Between 1958 and 1987, Warhol caught Liza Minnelli and Anjelica Huston in their prime; Audrey Hepburn in her 40s; and John Kennedy Jr., Tatum O’Neal, and Jade Jagger as toddlers. There are shots of Warhol himself, too — self-portraits, of course, but also those taken by others, like a shot of him backstage at a Rolling Stones show with Stevie Wonder in 1972. Click through the slideshow to see that picture and 11 more, including Polaroids of Hepburn, Minnelli, Warren Beatty, and a very muscly Arnold Schwarzenegger.
