Skip to content

Time Capsule 21:
Photography

Andy Warhol used photography to view and interact with the world throughout his career. As a commercial artist in the 1950s, he used photographs as the basis for his drawings, tracing the contours of images with his blotted line technique. Warhol continued to use photographic source material for his early Pop paintings in 1961, using an opaque projector to transfer subject matter. From 1962 onwards, Warhol’s practice incorporated photomechanical silkscreen printing to manipulate images from American popular culture including newspaper headlines, Life magazine features, and movie star glossies. Warhol also used photobooth machines and Polaroid cameras for commissioned portraits, frequently photographing celebrities and friends in the art, entertainment, and fashion worlds. Many of these were later published in his books, Andy Warhol’s Exposures (1979) and Andy Warhol’s Party Book (1988).