Andy Warhol: original FOMO artist, Polaroid photographer extraordinaire

Date
4 September 2015
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Andy Warhol sure did look like he was fun at parties – or at least he surrounded himself with people that were. A stunning new Taschen book shows off Warhol’s life just as he’d have liked us to see it: a vast expanse of intimate moments with the rich, famous, beautiful and fun. Andy Warhol, Polaroids by Richard B Woodward displays every single one of Warhol’s Polaroid photographs between 1958 and 1987, and as many have suggested, it’s like browsing social media today: impossibly fabulous and carefully curated to within a millimetre of the images’ little white borders. It’s fascinating to see how the snaps reflect Warhol’s perception of himself through his career – in the later images, he’s carefully name stamped each one, as though preparing for their inevitable collectibility. Mixing portraits of superstars like Mike Jagger, Jack Nicholson and Debbie Harry with landscapes and Cabbage Patch Doll still lifes, it’s a gorgeous visual journal of three decades of Warhol’s life, and one that induces more FOMO than any modern-day snappers could dream of.
Above
Left

Divine
, 1974
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Right

Dolly Parton 
1985
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above

Dolly Parton 
1985
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above

Audrey Hepburn 
1973
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above

Jack Nicholson 
1972
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above
Yves Saint Laurent

Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above

Jean-Michel Basquiat 
1983
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above

Andy Warhol, Polaroids cover
© TASCHEN

Above

Jane Forth and Max Delys, on the set of ‘L’Amour’, Paris
 1970
Copyright: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Above

Andy Warhol, Polaroids
© TASCHEN

Above

Andy Warhol, Polaroids
© TASCHEN

Share Article

Further Info

About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.