Body: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is a very celebrated photographer that is famous for his pop art style, celebrity portraits and also his self portraits. In the early 80's Warhol collaborated with photographer Christopher Makos. They worked on a series of self portraits of Warhol in drag. He had an ongoing interest in drag queens  and in general the aspect of artificial role play which you could even say  he looked at in his celebrity images of people such as Marilyn Monroe.


This series was not about revealing ones self it was about presenting a mask. I find this idea of creating a new identity for yourself very intruiging. Men dress as women for different reasons but Warhol has decided not to focus on a female alter ego or a reasoning for the the change in appearance. He is exposing the vulnerability of feeling to need to present yourself in a way to mask who you are. 

The image above is slightly different to the others within the collection. He is not trying to trick the observer into believing that he is a women which could be said for the image below. He has deliberately included his broad masculine shoulders in the photo and his lack of breasts is also obvious. The angle of the camera makes his heavy set jaw quite prominent aswell which is a feature that is thought to be very manly.

I think the he has photography this in this way to make it very blatant that he is a man impersonating a women to reinforce the fact that a front is being put on.

Warhol Has used a plain white backdrop for all of his images within this series which is think I may choose to mimic when I do my own portrait for this project. It means that all of the focus is draw to the model and it work particularly well when he wears bright lipstick and bold wigs as seen in the image above. Also the whitening of the face draws attention to the brightly coloured sections of the image which are the fake elements that create his new persona.