Andy and Hitchcock

WALL LABEL: Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media, 2023

Having his photograph taken with celebrities was an important part of Warhol’s self-portraiture. This photograph was taken when Warhol interviewed the legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (September 1974 issue). The Polaroid inadvertently captures the eerie timbre of their conversation, which revolved around murder and what motivates an individual to commit it. 

The article provides a verbatim transcription of Warhol’s tape recording of their encounter, which reveals that, when Warhol arrived at Hitchcock’s hotel suite, Hitchcock was still talking to a journalist and professional photographer from a national weekly magazine. Although not identified in the article, the professional photographer was Jill Krementz and she used Warhol’s camera to take this Polaroid of Warhol and Hitchcock together. Warhol and Krementz’s conversation about taking the actual photograph is documented on the second page of the article:

AW: This is my old fashioned Polaroid …

Photographer: Would you like me to take a picture of you two together with it?

AW: Would you. How great…

Photographer: Just tell me where to go …

AW: Closer, closer, closer, closer, three feet

Photographer: Okay, can you put your heads together? Boy, you really have to get close …

AH: … That sounds like a rude remark ...

Photographer: Put your heads a little closer … That looked good

…

Photographer: (unpeeling the Polaroid) It’s too light. Too close. Where you told me. Tried to focus

AW: Well, it’s nice anyway. Do you want to keep your first Bigshot picture?

Photographer: No, I want it to appear some day in one of your shows.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs