Bob Colacello’s Pictures of Wild Nights out with Andy Warhol, 1976 – 82

“I was on the inside and the outside, taking pictures that no one else could”

– Bob Colacello

 

Bob Colacello was editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine from 1971 to 1983 and author of the magazine’s infamous party column, OUT. During that time he took pictures of nights out with Warhol. Brought together for the show at Vito Schnabel Projects, Pictures from Another Time: Photographs by Bob Colacello, 1976 – 82, we see his photographs of ‘the Me Decade’.

Colacello shot using a Minox 35 EL spy camera, the first miniature camera capable of making full frame 35-millimetre photographs – it was around the size of a packet of cigarettes. “I got a camera – we both got these Minox 35 ELs in Germany, which had just appeared in Europe,” he told Vanity Fair. “Until then Andy had this big Polaroid Big Shot that he carried in a plastic shopping bag from Bramley’s Health Food Store, and this little camera you could have in your coat jacket pocket and just take it out and sort of sneak pictures. It was harder for Andy to do that, and that’s sort of the difference between his photos from that time and mine, because people were so aware that they were with Andy Warhol, a celebrity, that as soon as they saw Andy taking a picture, they went into a pose.”

 

“I knew the greatest old people back when I was a kid,” he said. “Whether it was Diana Vreeland or Bill Buckley or Truman Capote — they all seemed ancient to me. [But] they were really curious about everything going on and they had young friends. And, I’m now [practically] their age. I’m lucky that I have friends like Vito, and that so many of my friends’ children think I’m cool because I worked for [Andy.]”

– Bob Colacello

 

“Andy liked having me around, because I could talk to anybody, and I also have a great memory, particularly for what people had said. I didn’t really remember so much what people wore or every painting in their house, which is what Fred Hughes could do. But I remembered whole conversations, and he said, “Well, if people won’t let me tape record, you’re my human tape recorder.”

– Bob Colacello

 

“Andy was a famous artist that had access to everyone. Who was buying the art? The rich people. Who was funding the politicians? The rich people. It all blended.”

– Bob Colacello

 

“I loved taking photos with hands blocking out a face, it’s not people posing, it’s a party.”

– Bob Colacello

 

“I can tell you that I’m grateful that when I was in my 20s in New York, nobody had phones with cameras. Because a lot of what went on would not have gone on, I don’t think.”

– Bob Colacello

 

“I think people had more of a sense of humor about themselves and even about political issues. People weren’t so ideological. I think as a society, we’re becoming more and more humorless.”

– Bob Colacello

 

 

“I was on the inside and the outside, taking pictures that no one else could. No one has a picture of Andy eating a room service breakfast in his hotel in Naples, wearing his jockey shorts.”

– Bob Colacello via

 

“His nightshirt was that day’s shirt, almost always Brooks Brothers blue oxford cloth button down. Yes, the photos of off-the-duty Andy are among my favorites, fairly rare unposed portraits of a man who almost always posed in the same hard, cool way when photographed out and about”

– Bob Colacello Via

Bob’s memoir of that period, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, was acclaimed by The New York Times, as “the best-written and the most killingly observed” book on the so-called Pope of Pop.

 

Pictures From Another Time: Photographs by Bob Colacello, 1976 – 1982 runs until 21 June at Vito Schnabel Projects, 43 Clarkson Street, New York City.