Andy Warhol's Exposures
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| Author | Andy Warhol Bob Colacello |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Photo book |
| Published | 1979 |
| Publisher | Andy Warhol Books/Grosset & Dunlap |
| Publication place | United States |
| ISBN | 9780448128504 |
Exposures, also known as Andy Warhol's Exposures, is a 1979 photography book by American artist Andy Warhol, with text co-written by Bob Colacello. Published by Andy Warhol Books, an imprint of Grosset & Dunlap, the book combines candid black-and-white photographs with anecdotal text to document Warhol's social circle and the celebrity culture of 1970s New York.
Pop artist Andy Warhol was a photography enthusiast who famously carried around a Polaroid camera in the 1970s.[1] He used Polaroids as the basis of his commissioned silkscreen portraits.[2][3]
In 1976, Warhol and Bob Colacello, editor of Warhol's Interview magazine, both purchased a Minox 35EL camera while they were in Bonn. Considering the amount of traveling they did, Warhol suggested that they should do a photography book together with the photos they took at social events and business trips.[4] Warhol liked how small and sleek the camera looked, comparing it to a "'spy' camera because it takes pictures without arousing the notice of the subject."[5]
Photographer Christopher Makos was hired as the art director for the book to create the layout.[4]
Content
Exposures reflects Andy Warhol's deep immersion in celebrity culture at the end of the 1970s. Framed as both a photographic record and a social document, the book centers on the "glitterati" orbiting venues such as Studio 54 and other fashionable nightlife spaces.[6] Warhol himself described his omnipresence at such events with characteristic irony, writing that he would attend "the opening of anything, including a toilet seat."[6]
The book contains more than 350 black-and-white unpublished photographs alongside a loosely structured, conversational text.[7] Its tone is informal and often gossipy, capturing figures from across art, fashion, politics, and entertainment, including Mick Jagger, Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Diana Vreeland, Calvin Klein, Muhammad Ali, Yves Saint Laurent, Jimmy Carter, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Elton John, and others within Warhol's extended circle.[6]
Warhol approached the project as a form of informal photojournalism, aiming to capture "famous people doing something unfamous"—moments of ordinariness such as eating, talking, or off-guard gestures.[6] At the same time, he admitted the limitations of his method and emphasized his reluctance to present subjects negatively, noting that as the publisher of Interview magazine, "I won't let anyone say anything bad (about others) in print. I always like to put people up, rather than down."[6] This ethos extended to the photographs themselves, which, while candid, avoided overtly unflattering portrayals.[6]
Several of the book's anecdotes were drawn from Bob Colacello's own experiences, a process he later described with ambivalence in his memoir Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Up Close: "I hated the fact that I was ghostwriting again, that every time I typed 'I' it was Andy, not me. When I'd worked on the Philosophy book that had seemed liberating, but now it felt humiliating, especially since the stories 'I' was telling were mine, not Andy's. In some cases, I put Andy at scenes where only I had been. It was a form of lying of course, but there was no other way to write an Andy Warhol book, no more Warhol way."[4]
