A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol

Description

In late 1964 Andy Warhol commissioned young fashion photographer David McCabe to document his daily activities for one year. During the course of this project, whenever the artist called McCabe would come to meet him at The Factory, an opening, a party, a coffeeshop or any place where Warhol would decide that he wanted to be accompanied by the photographer and his camera. In the end, these images were never published, perhaps because they revealed more than the increasingly-famous Warhol was willing to share with the public.

Hidden away for almost 40 years, the significant majority of these 400 duotone photos are now presented together for the first time to fulfill their original intention in an astounding tour de force of dynamic and often poignant realism: A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol. These images not only represent unique documentation of one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century, but also provide a rare behind-the-scenes look at the New York art world at a time when Pop art was at its peak. McCabe’s photographs are accompanied by the entertaining descriptions and reminiscences of Factory insider David Dalton, one of Warhol’s first assistants.

David McCabe was born in 1940 in Leicester, England, where he studied Graphic Design and Photography. While in art school, he won an international photo competition sponsored by the magazine Practical Photography and was hired by the Mayflower photo studio in London. In 1960, he moved to New York, where he first worked as an assistant and studied under Alexey Brodovitch, Henry Wolf and Melvin Sokolsky. He received his first assignment with Condé Nast in 1963, and was contacted by Andy Warhol the following year. McCabe’s photographs have been published in various magazines including Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, W, French Elle, French Vogue and The Times. A selection of his photographs of Andy Warhol have recently been exhibited in many museums around the world.

David Dalton was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and is the author of over ten fiction and non-fiction books, including James Dean: The Mutant King and El Sid: Saint Vicious. As teenagers he and his sister Sarah were Andy Warhol’s first assistants. It is he who designed – with Warhol himself in 1964 – the ‘Fab’ issue of the Aspen magazine.

‘Now Andy Warhol fans get their first chance to own a photographic diary of his circle in the year 1964-65.’ (British Vogue)

‘What you get is what you would expect: an inimitable record of a cultural icon in the process of inventing himself … Text supplier David Dalton (himself a picture subject) suggests that Warhol didn’t want the project published because he appeared more lively and spontaneous than his bland-faced self-iconising would permit; whatever the reason, we’re lucky to have got them now.’ (Guardian)

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