Andy Warhol
[Artist, b. 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 1987, New York.]

 A picture just means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pictures. It’s a visual diary. 
 During this period [1960s] I took thousands of Polaroids of genitals. Whenever somebody came up to the Factory, no matter how straight-looking he was, I’d ask him to take his pants off so I could photograph his cock and balls... Personally, I loved porno and I bought lots of it all the time—the really dirty, exciting stuff. All you had to do was figure out what turned you on, and then just buy the dirty magazines and movie prints that are right for you, the way you’d go for the right pills or right cans of food. 
 I get someone who is sort of famous as a photographer to do my printing. Then I don’t know whether it’s his picture or my picture. 
 But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect. 
 As for the paintings, the images I’ve used have all been seen before via the media. I guess they’re media images. Always from reportage photographs or from old books, or from four for a quarter photo machines. No, I don’t change the media, nor do I distinguish between my art and the media. I just repeat the media by utilizing the media for my work. I believe media is art. 
 I always try to make the person look good. It’s easier if you give somebody something back that looks like them. Otherwise, if I were more imaginative, it wouldn’t look like the person. 
 I’d gotten myself a 35mm camera and for a few weeks there I was taking photographs, but it was too complicated for me. I got impatient with the f-stops, the shutter speeds, the light readings, so I dropped it. (1964) 
 ... I started repeating the same image because I liked the way the repetition changed the same image. Also, I felt at the time, as I do now, that people can look at and absorb more than one image at a time. 
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