100,000 Unseen Photos by Andy Warhol Will Be Made Public This Fall

Pop art fans, rejoice! The Andy Warhol Foundation will release tens of thousands of the artist’s previously unseen photographs for the first time, including intimate images of the artist’s celebrity friends and lovers.

The pictures showcase Warhol’s obsession with documenting everything around him, from parties with famous friends to street signs. (He once said, “A picture means I know where I was every minute, that’s why I take pictures,” according to the Guardian.)

The Contact Warhol Project is led by Stanford art professors Peggy Phelan and Richard Meyer. Phelan says that a big part of the artist’s genius was how he approached everyday objects.

“His eye is incredible, everything interested him from trash cans, litter, detritus, and room service carts,” she told artnet News. “He took the same care photographing objects that most people would overlook as he would with a photoshoot with Liza Minelli. He had very little border between what’s visually compelling and dog walking signs.”

The archive, she explained, also demonstrated Warhol’s tireless work ethic: “There was no downtime, the distinction between daily life and artwork is completely obviated by this archive.”

The contacts sheets demonstrate that Warhol anticipated today’s image-driven culture, according to the professor. “He would take at least one roll of film per day, sometimes more,” she said. “He was very prescient about what we now do with cell phones, but at the time he was way in front of the curve. The habit of documenting our lives that many of us have acquired—he was doing that in 1976.”

Warhol fans won’t have to wait long to see the archived images. A selection of the unreleased photos will be exhibited at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center in September, and a book about the project will be published in the UK in November. The digital library will be launched online by the end of the year.

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Henri Neuendorf | news.artnet.com
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