Snap Shots: by Harry Flashman
You and Andy Warhol
What is the difference between you and Andy Warhol? Well, for a start, you are alive and Andy Warhol is dead! However, Andy Warhol lives on in his “art” in the ‘copy’ shops in Thailand. The fluoro ‘Marilyn’ series in particular. However, Andy Warhol left far more than Marilyn and the famous Campbell’s soup can. He left a huge collection of photographs. Andy Warhol and yourself are both photographers.
Andy Warhol was a complex character. He said, “I also take my camera everywhere. Having a few rolls of film to develop gives me a good reason to get up in the morning.”
He also did not think much of the technical side of photography, “I love the new, small automatic-focus 35 mm cameras like Minox and Konica. I think anyone can take a good picture. My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It’s being in the right place at the wrong time.”
Andy Warhol was really a voyeur. However, he was a voyeur of people who wanted to be spied upon, which gave it all a pseudo-legitimacy. I looked through the book, Andy Warhol’s Exposures, the other day just to see if his photos had any real lasting ‘merit’ as photographic works of art. At the risk of enraging all the Andy fans, really they were nothing but ‘record’ shots showing the glitterati set doing what they do best – posing and poncing around.
But where Andy Warhol excelled was in the fact that he could get to all the places that the celebrities would go. He was accepted, and his poky little cameras with their on-camera flashes were just part of Andy. The photographs are then only of merit because of their subject matter, not for technique or for final technical quality. Many are ‘blown out’ with the subjects too close to the flash, others are blurred. However, the majority are taken with the subjects looking away from the camera – while they are still posing, rather than actually posing for the camera using ‘eye contact’ with the lens. It was a crazy way to take photos, but still one that helped Andy Warhol to fame and fortune.
Even though the book Andy Warhol’s Exposures is ostensibly a photo book, there being more pictures than words, it is really about ‘exposing’ the private persona of the celebrity subjects. People who did not really have (or wish to have) private lives. Like Dean Martin’s ex-wife’s boyfriend. Yes, that’s the sort of people you could expect to find being photographed by the famous Campbell’s soup can artist. Of course, he also photographed Mick and Bianca Jagger, ex-US President Jimmy Carter, a swag of Kennedy’s, movie stars, transvestites and the works. As long as somebody thought they were famous.
Andy Warhol was the ‘ultimate’ street photographer. Just as Cartier-Bresson photographed the ordinary people, Andy Warhol photographed the out of the ordinary people. His relentless shots taken in Studio 54, the ‘in place’ disco are albums of freaks, hangers-on, minor celebrities, aging movie stars, starlets eager for any publicity, drunks, transvestites, designers, people with designs on being designers, the whole superfluous and superficial crowd. And Andy got them all, and in some ways recorded an era for posterity.
So what was the point of this week’s column? Just that if you want to contribute something to the world of photography, you must take photos. It doesn’t matter whether you know anything about the science behind it all – the important thing is you have to have images.
In turn, those images must have a theme. Andy Warhol’s was the rich and famous, wannabe’s and hangerson. You need to get a theme too. Night life in Thailand has probably been done to death, as also the women of Thailand, as beautiful and beguiling as they are. However, if you are a true disciple of Andy Warhol you would perhaps do a series on the transvestites of Thailand – not in their beautiful stage outfits but rather dressed in ordinary clothes, without make-up and shopping at the supermarkets.
Find a theme and start shooting today!
