The Minox and The Big Shot: Andy Warhol's Photography (1970-87)

This exhibition of Andy Warhol’s photographs is culled from over 100 Polaroids and black and white silver gelatin prints granted to the University Gallery by the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Program aims to provide greater access to Warhol’s creative process and to enable a wide range of people to view the important yet relatively unknown body of Warhol’s photography.

The Minox & the Big Shot explores the significance of Warhol's photography in relation to his larger artistic practice. The works on view in this exhibition provide a counterpoint to the artist's better known Pop paintings and films from the 1960's in their diminutive size and non-iconic quality. Numerous Polaroids of unknown sitters and candid black and white shots of friends are mixed with photos of the famous company Warhol kept. Together, they offer the opportunity to see through Warhol's eyes, the individuals and objects which fascinated him, and they become icons in their own right, of the quest for fame with which Warhol was always preoccupied.As the University Gallery’s first Curatorial Fellow, Kathleen Banach (M.A. candidate in Art History ’09) will work in consultation with the staff of the University Gallery and art history professor Mario Ontiveros to focus her research on these photographs. She will be the first to study this body of Warhol’s work, culminating in an exhibition and curatorial essay which will provide a wealth of information about the artist’s process and interaction with his subjects.