Vogue

Vogue enters the diary through specific commissions rather than an account of the magazine’s history: French Vogue asked Andy Warhol to photograph Princess Caroline for a December cover and later paid him for a photography assignment. The episodes reveal how editorial access, celebrity image-making, and the practical staging of photographs met in his work.

Editorial commissions and celebrity

The clearest cover commission came in October 1983, when Princess Caroline was due at Warhol’s office to pose for the December cover of French Vogue. She was also guest editor of that year’s Christmas issue, linking the cover session to a broader editorial role. Warhol was asked to photograph her, and the magazine also wanted pictures of him taking the photographs—a second layer of image-making that made the photographer part of the scene.

Princess Caroline’s cover session

The sitting took time to prepare: although Princess Caroline had arrived, she spent one or two hours getting dressed. A Japanese makeup artist helped ready her for the camera. Warhol considered her pretty but thought she looked older and as though she had been through a great deal; he also observed how the team knew how to pull her together. His account makes the cover’s polished appearance a result of visible preparation, not simply the subject’s presence before the lens.

A paid photography assignment

In February 1984, Warhol began photographing for another French Vogue assignment. He noted that he was being paid $250 a day, giving the work a clear professional and financial dimension. On that first day he went to the new building at 33rd Street and Madison Avenue, where André Leon Talley was styling the shoot. The diary presents the assignment as active work, with a fee, a location, and a stylist shaping the session.

Staging the Guardian Angels

The day’s photographs involved the Guardian Angels, who had been told to meet the crew at the building. The basement was the only room that looked enough like a subway to serve as the setting. Warhol described the group as nice-looking and found their theatricality part of their appeal, while noting that they were accused of staging an incident. In this account, the basement’s resemblance to a subway and the subjects’ striking appearance show how a fashion-magazine assignment could construct a photographic scene from an available space and a carefully styled group.