Photographed during the nascent period of Andy Warhol’s artistic career, this intimate image captures the artist mid-call on the telephone that anchored the social life and business operations of his Silver Factory studio. William John Kennedy’s lens finds Warhol not performing for the camera but absorbed in the ordinary day-to-day running of his emerging enterprise, a rare instance of unguarded observation. For Warhol, the phone call was his preferred form of communication, so central to his life that his Diaries, published posthumously, were, in effect, written on the telephone through daily dictated calls.

Kennedy first entered Warhol's orbit in 1963 through Robert Indiana, and by 1964 he was a regular presence at the Factory, photographing Warhol in the studio along with his assistant Gerard Malanga, ‘Superstar’ Ultra Violet, and writer Taylor Mead. The photographer’s widow, Marie Kennedy, later recalled that Warhol ‘was quite shy’ in most company, ‘you had to coax him out,’ yet ‘he was much more at ease with [William].’ Eric Shiner, former director of the Andy Warhol Museum, described the resulting portraits as ‘the most intimate depictions of Andy that I have ever encountered,’ noting that they capture him ‘at the brink of his emergence as a renowned art figure, yet he remains his natural, amusing, and lighthearted self in every frame.’