Photo via Facebook / Museum of Wisconsin Art
For Douglas Edmunds, photography happened by chance as an attempt to chronicle a light sculpture he created as a UW-Madison art education student. The attempt, the Madison native admits, wasn’t successful, but it lit a fire in Edmunds, one that burns most brightly in his current Museum of Wisconsin Art exhibit.
“Andy Warhol and the Portfolio of Fame: The Photography of Douglas Edmunds,” which opens Jan. 30 at the West Bend museum, records the photographer’s brushes with fame. Pop art giant Warhol occupies four of the 13 40” x 50” images on display. The subject list also includes jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, composer Aaron Copland, comedienne/actress Lily Tomlin, and a host of others.
“This is remarkably honest photography of people who were famous for their achievements,” says Graeme Reid, the MOWA exhibit’s curator. “They are basically head-and-shoulders warts-and-all closeups with all but one subject making eye contact with the viewer.”
Kindness of Strangers
Edmunds’ choice of subjects evolved much like his choice of photography as his chosen art form. He didn’t know any of them before he shot them, relying on references from strangers and friends of friends of friends to introduce him. “I realized that we truly are just one person away from knowing everyone in the world,” says the jovial photographer, who with his wife Teri operates Edmunds Studios Photography in Cedarburg.
Edmunds did teach art in Madison and elsewhere for a few years before devoting himself to photography, working largely in black and white “because it was cheaper than color.” He had a lighting sculpture exhibit at the former Madison Art Center, now the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, when he showed museum director Thomas Garver his series of black-and-white portraits of local people. The response was immediate and positive, resulting in CITIZEN, a 1980 one-man show comprised of 81 portraits all shot against a white background ranging in subject matter from then Mayor Paul Soglin and Governor Lee Sherman Dreyfus to Art Nesson, better known as “Art the Window Washer,” a street person who picked up spare change by washing the plate glass windows of State Street businesses.
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“I had spent about two years on this project and, for me, the portraits themselves were just footprints in the sand,” Edmunds says. “It was all about the journey, and the images really took Madison by storm.”
Subject and Artist
Photo via Museum of Wisconsin Art
CITIZEN helped Edmunds define his portraiture technique, which he uses to this day. “A portrait is the record of the relationship between the subject and the artist and his camera,” Edmunds explains. “You have to gain their trust in a very short amount of time. I direct them, sometimes barking orders at them. They’re responding to me so they are not self conscious about what they’re doing, but I do give them space to improvise.”
Having conquered Madison by begging introductions and knocking on doors, Edmunds felt he was ready to conquer the world, starting with the United States. “I was really full of hubris at the time,” he admits, “even though I had no idea who I was going to shoot.”
As with CITIZEN, many of the contacts leading to his famous subjects started locally. Edmunds’ series on singer Fitzgerald happened backstage at the former Madison Civic Center, now part of Overture Center for the Arts. She was in town with her band and the photographer had literally 3 minutes to fire off his camera as she readied herself to take the stage.
Actress Tomlin, also in Madison for a Civic Center performance, did an impromptu gig as a gum-popping waitress at an east side coffee shop, which Edmunds was able to capture on film. After befriending Tomlin’s manager, Edmunds followed them to Milwaukee’s Marcus Center, where Tomlin had a gig the next night, and spent time shooting her on an empty stage prior to the performance.
As for artist Warhol, the journey was more circuitous and the effort greater. Madison Art Center’s Garver provided Edmunds with an introduction to Henry Geldzahler, curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, who the photographer then shot. Geldzahler offered to introduce him to Warhol, but never provided him with either a phone number or an introduction. Undaunted, Edmunds called Interview, Warhol’s magazine, dropped Geldzahler’s name and asked to shoot the famous artist. Surprisingly, Warhol agreed, but did not say where or when.
Edmunds made similar phone calls whenever he was in New York to no avail. Fed up after four months of evasion, Edmunds called again and said he and his wife would be camping out on the sidewalk in font of The Factory, Warhol’s studio, until he was permitted to shoot the artist. The threat got him in the door. Warhol appeared, struck a variety of poses with various props and, after exactly 15 minutes, left the room.
In 1968, Warhol famously predicted that in the future everyone would be world-famous for 15 minutes. Armed with a photographic record of his relationship, Edmunds figures that session was his turn.
Andy Warhol and the Portfolio of Fame: Photography by Douglas Edmunds will be on display through May 2 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend.
