William John Kennedy, aware of Warhol's recent Flowers series, sought an inventive manner to integrate the two. While traversing near the site of the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing, Queens, Kennedy observed a substantial patch of six-foot-tall, wild black-eyed Susans flourishing in an abandoned meadow. Enthusiastic about employing this location as an immersive setting for photographing Warhol alongside his Flowers paintings, Kennedy promptly located the nearest public payphone to inform him of his discovery. Warhol, pleased with the notion, replied, "Pick me up!"

Kennedy, always with a camera, promptly proceeded to the Factory on East 47th Street, where Warhol, actor and poet Taylor Mead, and Kennedy's wife, Marie, Compressively entered Kennedy's diminutive Volkswagen. With a freshly painted and unstretched Flowers canvas, rolled up and serving as a provisional backdrop, they journeyed back to Queens. The canvas was held upright by Mead and Marie, whilst Warhol, cloaked in Kennedy's sweater, appeared waif-like before the large floral representation, clutching a bouquet of wildflowers. Kennedy, employing rapid, film-like sequences, captured over fifty colour portraits of the compliant actors. Mead, occasionally with a bottle of gin in hand, engaged Kennedy's camera with remarkable fluidity, whilst Warhol laughed and frolicked among the flowers. Marie Kennedy recollected that William “always created an environment of ease. It was a truly magical moment. While Taylor played the jester, Andy fully relaxed and revelled in every aspect of that extraordinary day in 1964,”

Later that year, the Flowers paintings were exhibited in Warhol's inaugural solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery, his newly appointed dealer. The exhibition was personally meaningful to Warhol since he had previously endeavoured unsuccessfully for three years to join Castelli’s esteemed roster of artists. It was in 1962 that Henry Geldzahler, then a young curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, urged Warhol to produce the monumental Death and Disaster series, which was subsequently followed by the Flowers works. Warhol's "Flowers" series of 1964, adapted from a hibiscus photograph published in Modern Photography magazine, marked a deliberate turn toward lighthearted imagery following the darker Death and Disaster paintings. The exhibition of Flowers was regarded as a coda to the extensive Death and Disaster series, signifying the conclusion of 1964.