Bob Colacello: In and Out with Andy

As a fixture of the wild, glamorous, disco-and-drugs-driven world of Andy Warhol, Bob Colacello was perfectly positioned to record the frenetic pace of the 70's-era Factory scene. This first major museum exhibition of Colacello's candid photos includes vintage prints and selections from his book, OUT.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website


Whether you go or not, Bob Colacello's OUT documents an era at once so close and so far away: the wild, glamorous, disco-and-drugs decade between the end of the Vietnam war and the advent of AIDS, when, in certain parts of Manhattan, every night was party night. As the editor of Andy Warhol's Interview from 1971 to 1983, Bob Colacello was perfectly placed to record this life of art openings, movie premieres, cocktail parties, dinner parties, charity balls and after-hours clubs; he wrote about the best of them in a monthly column called "Out."   With their skewed angles, multilayered compositions, and moody lighting, his images have an immediacy and grit not often found in the work of professional party photographers. And what subjects! (...) Only a handful of Colacello's pictures were published each month. Most of those collected in OUT have never been seen before.