Working as an assistant and studio manager for American fashion photographer, Clifford Coffin, instilled William John Kennedy’s love for photography. In the 1960s, his friendships with artists gave rise to a series of figurative silver gelatin and chromogenic prints. Like his subjects, Kennedy was an observer of Pop culture. His intuition told him to capture it, as it happened, with artists in situ, through the lens of his camera. Kennedy’s staged photographs are portraits of awkward, young, and struggling artists: Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Marisol Escobar, Claus Oldenburg, or Roy Lichtenstein holding their work, recumbent in thought, or huddled in conversation. Kennedy was prolific.

With the same energy as his subjects, Kennedy captured the essence of the artists, and none like Andy Warhol. Placing him in idealized settings, experimenting with photographic technique, or coloring, Kennedy set the stage of paradox: a misfitted character juxtaposed in makeshift places on multiple planes in space. His “Andy Warhol with Flower and His Flowers Canvas,” evinces Warhol’s outrageousness long before his name became synonymous with the Pop Art Movement; it visually documents Warhol’s boundless creative activity and spontaneity. It reveals the “mistfit” superstar early in his career adjacent to one of his most iconic works. Kennedy did for artists what every artist dreams: to have someone, anyone with ingenuity and imagination, take interest and document their journey, their story. Ironically, Warhol more than anyone in history never waned in self-promotion or documentation. Kennedy merely jump-started the engine.



Artist bio

William John Kennedy (b. 1930, American) is a photographer best known for the series “Before they were famous” stemming from his friendships with artists. In the 1950s, he worked for Clifford Coffin as an assistant and as a studio manager. Subsequently, he became a freelance photographer taking unchoreographed snap shots of artists at rest, at play, or at work. In the 1960s, Kennedy befriended Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana, and set out capturing them with his camera in an authentic way— as ordinary people, before they became household names.

Kennedy studied fine art at Syracuse University School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute, and subsequently worked as a successful freelance photographer. His work has appeared in publications such as LIFE Magazine and Sports Illustrated. Corporate clients include Avon; GE; IBM; RJR Nabisco; American Express; and Xerox. His photographs are included in the collection of museums such as the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Polk Museum of Art; Boca Raton Museum of Art; Indiana State University; New York University; Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Collection of BNY Mellon.