Before there was Instagram: Andy Warhol, Polaroids. TASCHEN Books

Andy Warhol. Polaroids

US$ 100

“A picture means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pictures. It’s a visual diary.” - Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was a relentless chronicler of life and its encounters. Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, he amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself. Created in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation, this book features hundreds of these instant photos, many of them never seen before.

Portraits of celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Nicholson, Yves Saint Laurent, Pelé, Debbie Harry are included alongside images of Warhol’s entourage and high life, landscapes, and still lifes from Cabbage Patch dolls to the iconic soup cans. Often raw and impromptu, the Polaroids document Warhol’s era like Instagram captures our own, offering a unique record of the life, world, and vision behind the Pop Art maestro and modernist giant.

The author

Richard B. Woodward is a New York based arts critic who contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. His journalism has appeared in numerous publications, from The Atlantic, Bookforum, Film Comment, The American Scholar, and The New Yorker to Vanity Fair, Interview, and Vogue. His essays on art and photography have been featured in more than 20 monographs and museum catalogs.

The editor

Reuel Golden is the former editor of the British Journal of Photography. His TASCHEN titles include Capitol Records, Mick Rock: The Rise of David Bowie, both London and New York Portrait of a City books, Andy Warhol. Polaroids, The Rolling Stones, Her Majesty, Football in the 1970s, the National Geographic editions, and The David Bailey SUMO.

Andy Warhol. Polaroids

Richard B. Woodward, Reuel Golden

Hardcover, Swiss binding with bifold cover, 10.6 x 13.4 in., 560 pages

“…a fascinating insight of Andy Warhol’s intimate relationship with his celebrity friends… They include celebrity friends such as Dennis Hopper, Divine, Audrey Hepburn, Yves Saint Laurent and Nico, and have one thing in common – they look fabulous.”

— The Guardian, London
“…This is just too cool for school. I don’t say this about just anything, but Andy Warhol Polaroids is really the definitive picture book for every modern culture vulture, photography nut and pop-art freak who’s ever stared at Warhol’s near-neon screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s soup and wondered, what is going on with that man? Consider this book a voyeuristic little peek into what went on…”

— Female, Singapore
“From 1958 until his death in 1987, Andy Warhol took hundreds, if not thousands, of instant photos. Many have sold at auction over the years, but 700 of his less famous snapshots can be seen in Andy Warhol. Polaroids. The star power in the book is staggering, but Warhol’s brilliant use of Polaroids is just as fascinating.”

— Wired.com, New York
“Andy Warhol. Polaroids reads like the Instagram feed that might have been… the book is itself a snapshot of culture and celebrity in the latter half of the 20th century.”

— Architecturaldigest.com, New York
“The connection Warhol drew in his art between photography and fame has become a bedrock belief of a generation that measures success in YouTube hits.”

— Richard Woodward
“The portraits signify who was welcomed into Warhol’s club, a place at once private, snobbish, and hostile to middle-class squares and yet open to scores of outcasts.”

— Richard Woodward
“So whilst we sit around waiting for someone to invent a time machine we can at least marvel at the incredibly glamorous photos in this book and imagine we’re hanging out at the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Studio 54 or the Chelsea Hotel.”

— propermag.com
“Warhol was already using his Polaroid like an iPhone. With his camera, he would document his life with hundreds, probably thousands, of Polaroids. Snapping his dogs, himself, his friends, his life. Looking at those snaps now, at a remove of some decades, there is a curious, ethereal power in the best of them, be they bleached or gaudily coloured and each framed in neat, white squares.”

— BBC Arts, London
“Warhol wanted people to see things as they were, as the Polaroids in [this] book exemplify. Flipping through its pages feels like the closest we'll ever get to Warhol's daily life at the time…”

— The Huffington Post, New York
“The celebrity shots offer a fascinating insight into the American world of glamour and excess among the company that Warhol kept. The artist is not solely concerned with American high society…the book also features some of his most searing images with stark landscapes and his famous soup cans.”

— The Times, London