“I never read. I just look at pictures.”—Andy Warhol
Fame is emblazoned on the American cultural landscape. It is attained, disseminated, and maintained through visual imagery. We can thank film, video, and photography for helping make fame famous, or rather, giving fame a tangible form. Andy Warhol’s take on fame was often wry and irreverent. Celebrity culture was to him, paradoxically, the sacred cow and the punch line. His influence in this realm is irrefutable, yet a younger generation of artists now tackles similar subject matter with fresh strategies and new technologies. Contemporary work employs the tropes of fame in a hybrid fashion that encompasses photography, digital media, and performance and is often self-reflexive. Perhaps that is because to examine fame or to be famous is to be self-reflexive.
For this issue of Camerawork, artists and curators Kota Ezawa and Karla Milosevich were actively engaged as guest editors—selecting the writer with whom they wanted to collaborate and commissioning an essay on the work of Jose Alvarez. Ezawa exchanges his ideas on the subject of fame and photography with John Smith of the Andy Warhol Museum, while author Kevin Killian considers Milosevich’s video oeuvre in terms of image and gesture. Writer Abraham Orden delves into Alvarez’s performative creation and its impact via the often manipulative medium of television—popular culture’s vehicle of choice.
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It is important to note that this is Camerawork’s inaugural cover-to-cover four-color issue—a move that provides a much more attractive platform for the reproduction of artist’s work. Mona Poon at Oceanic Graphic Printing, Anthony Laurino of Radio Radio Design, and Susan Schaefer from D-MAX Imaging helped us to comfortably make this leap in the smartest way possible. Also, Nicole DuCharme at SFMOMA shared her knowledge and expertise, writer Aimee Le Duc provided thoughtful critical input and enthusiastic support, and Malcolm Hamilton generously provided key source material and equipment. I extend my deepest gratitude to them all.
It was a great pleasure working with Kota Ezawa and Karla Milosevich. I thank them both for being lovely people and, as they make their ascension toward fame, I leave them with my favorite Warhol line: “Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”
Chuck Mobley
Associate Director
San Francisco Camerawork