Andy Warhol November 21, 1979

In 1979, Yousuf Karsh, the most famous portraitist of his time, photographed Andy Warhol (1928–1987), the most famously controversial artist of his time. Arguably, they had more in common than it might seem: both were household names due to the widespread proliferation of their images, and both were prolific creators supported by a cadre of assistants and agents. The portrait session was commissioned by Warhol’s print magazine, Interview, which was founded in 1969 as “the crystal ball of Pop” and featured interviews with and by celebrities.

As Karsh often did in portrait sessions, he took multiple exposures, selecting a few images for public release. In one black-and-white shot, with its characteristic sharp focus and deep shadows, Warhol embodies the purported banality of his Pop art aesthetic by holding a housepainter’s brush to his face. Warhol playfully draws attention to criticism of his “factory-like” artistic method, which involved many hands working in a large New York studio called the Factory.

A colour portrait from the same session features Warhol posing as if for an advertisement, holding a camera up to his face with playful reverence. Famous in his own right for photograph-based portraits of celebrities, Warhol—unlike Karsh—explored “low art” automatic camera technologies like the Polaroid camera and photo booth pictures as the basis for reproduction as screenprints.

In his portraits, Karsh aimed to distill a cumulative portrayal of his subject, capturing Warhol as a disruptor of art conventions. Karsh’s classic style of formal portraiture contrasts with that of his almost exact contemporary, the fashion and art photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004), challenging the viewer to reconsider what a portrait truly depicts. Avedon’s close-up of Warhol’s torso, covered in deep scars—evidence of an assassination attempt by Valerie Solanas—is posed against a stark white background: the absence of proof of life in the form of Warhol’s living face results in an unsettling, clinical “portrait” reminiscent of post-mortem photography. Avedon also monumentalized Warhol by printing this piece in massive, larger-than-life dimensions.

While both Karsh and Avedon highlight photography’s evidentiary role—namely, to bear witness—they pursue completely different approaches to representing the individual. Karsh records moments in the collaborative interplay between photographer and subject, capturing Warhol’s coyly self-acknowledged role as a provocateur. In this way, Karsh codifies Warhol’s already (in)famous persona. Avedon disrupts portrait convention by supplanting Warhol’s famous face with a topography of his trauma and survival.

The timing of Karsh’s portrait session with Warhol, which took place in the late 1970s, is particularly significant, as it occurred at a liminal moment when photographic practice began to change radically, with artists exploring postmodern concepts of the constructed self rather than seeking to capture the true essence of an individual in a single image. It also heralded Karsh’s arrival at the last phase of his career and the twilight of film photography, as digital photography emerged as the new paradigm.