I was beginning my 2nd year at the University of Pennsylvania. I had met an older student, Bob Kosiba, who was a yearbook photographer and agreed to start working on the yearbook myself. I ran into Bob one day and he told me about an event that was going to happen that night that he thought would be worth photographing, so I went with my camera. I think I had read in the Village Voice about Andy and his Brillo boxes and may also have heard about Edie the so-called “Girl of the Year” but I was far removed from the New York art scene.
It was a raucus fun dance party with loud rock music (I think I remember the Stones playing) in a wonderful old red stone classic Ivy League building. Andy, Edie and entourage showed up well into the party and I made a few snaps of him as they moved through the crowd. It was so packed and crazy that they moved to a small balcony overlooking the party. People sent up pieces of paper to be autographed and Andy would sign and send them back. Not to miss out I found the only paper on me, my New Jersey motorcycle license, and sent it up and somehow got it back with his signature.
I went back on another day and photographed the exhibit itself. The boxes didn’t move me – I got the idea but felt so what – but I liked the huge silkscreens which were copies of press photos.
Later I became involved with a student monthly magazine, Penn Comment, and published a few of the pictures as part of a photo spread. The one of Andy signing the soup can was later ripped off, just copied from the magazine, and printed in an early book about Warhol. When he died, Ingrid Sischy, editor of Art Forum, found that image and ripped it off again, copying if from the book and publishing it on the cover of the magazine in its tribute to him. Two issues later I finally got a credit. I don’t like getting ripped off but I kind of like that the Xerox-like quality of the Art Forum cover came about from a process similar to Warhol’s, as he ripped off all those images of Elvis, Marilyn and Jackie without giving pay or credit to the photographers.
Looking back, that night in October 1965 was in a way the beginning of the sixties for me. In December I went to Missisippi on a civil rights project and a year later Bob Kosiba turned me on to pot and the year after that we were all marching against the war and taking over the university president’s office (while Andy went on to party with Imelda Marcos and other super-wealthy people).
The only other time I took his picture was at the reopening of Studio 54 in 1981. This time I was on a balcony looking down at the party. Steve Rubell was standing next to me and when I told him I was taking pictures for Paris Match he got excited and asked if I’d like a photo of him with Andy Warhol. He found Andy and I took them outside and made some photos with the fire escape side of the building in the background. Andy put on that flat look he always put on for photographers. Back in 1965 he looked genuinely happy.
Charlie Steiner, February 4, 2010 ©2010
