Andy and Hitchcock

Andy Warhol
United States of America
1928 – 1987

Andy and Hitchcock
1974
Polaroid™ Polacolor Type 108
Place made
New York, New York, United States of America
Medium
Polaroid™ Polacolor Type 108
Dimensions
7.2 x 9.6 cm (image)
8.5 x 10.8 cm (sheet)
Credit line
V.B.F. Young Bequest Fund 2012
Accession number
201210Ph40
Signature and date
Not signed. Not dated.
Provenance
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York, 1987-2012.
Media category
Photograph
Collection area
American photographs
Copyright
© Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ARS/Copyright Agency

  • WALL LABEL: Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media, 2023


    Having his photograph taken with celebrities was an important part of Warhol’s self-portraiture. This photograph was taken when Warhol interviewed the legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (September 1974 issue). The Polaroid inadvertently captures the eerie timbre of their conversation, which revolved around murder and what motivates an individual to commit it. 

     

    The article provides a verbatim transcription of Warhol’s tape recording of their encounter, which reveals that, when Warhol arrived at Hitchcock’s hotel suite, Hitchcock was still talking to a journalist and professional photographer from a national weekly magazine. Although not identified in the article, the professional photographer was Jill Krementz and she used Warhol’s camera to take this Polaroid of Warhol and Hitchcock together. Warhol and Krementz’s conversation about taking the actual photograph is documented on the second page of the article:

     

    AW: This is my old fashioned Polaroid …

    Photographer: Would you like me to take a picture of you two together with it?

    AW: Would you. How great…

    Photographer: Just tell me where to go …

    AW: Closer, closer, closer, closer, three feet

    Photographer: Okay, can you put your heads together? Boy, you really have to get close …

    AH: … That sounds like a rude remark ...

    Photographer: Put your heads a little closer … That looked good

    …

    Photographer: (unpeeling the Polaroid) It’s too light. Too close. Where you told me. Tried to focus

    AW: Well, it’s nice anyway. Do you want to keep your first Bigshot picture?

    Photographer: No, I want it to appear some day in one of your shows.

     

    Julie Robinson, Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs

     

  • WALL LABEL: Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography, 2016

     

     

    As the source material for his paintings and at other times as images in their own right, photographs were essential to Warhol’s practice. He bought a Polaroid Big Shot camera in about 1970 and always travelled with at least two; he loved being able to get prints of images instantaneously.

     

    Having his photograph taken with celebrities was an important part of Warhol’s self-portraiture. This photograph was taken when Warhol interviewed the legendary film director, Alfred Hitchcock, for Interview magazine (September 1974). The artist later made numerous screenprints of Hitchcock, but none quite captures as well as this the eerie timbre of their conversation, which revolved around murder and what drives an individual to commit it. 

     

    Julie Robinson, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs

     

  • Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media

    Art Gallery of South Australia, 3 March 2023 – 14 May 2023

  • Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography

    Art Gallery of South Australia, 5 February 2016 – 18 September 2016