I thought Hal Forster’s article “Test Subjects” made clear a very interesting focus of Warhol’s work: the way in which the subject can be transformed into an image. For Warhol, this conversion is not smooth but is instead marred by anxiety and trepidation as the subject attempts to either resist being made iconic or self-determine his or her own icon. Warhol saw this anxiety as being brought about by the advent of cameras capable of taking immediate photographs. While the cameras of the past required long exposure and thus provided enough time for subjects to construct themselves as an iconic image, to prepare an iconic representation of themselves to be turned into image, in the era of cameras that require only a touch of a finger to create images the subject is left scrambling, unable to craft an image of him or herself, wholly at the mercy of the unfeeling mechanical camera.
Warhol demonstrated this anxiety of being made iconic through his exploration of three different “genres” of photograph – mugshots of criminals, pictures taken in photo booths, and publicity photos of celebrities. Despite being very different, Warhol saw each of these classes of photograph as indicative of this crisis of imagification brought about by the presence of a camera. For Warhol, each of these types of photographs represents a response to the assault of technology, the subject fighting back against being made image by the camera.
The three types of images represent three separate responses. In his “Thirteen Most Wanted Men,” Warhol demonstrates the subjects attempt to resist being made iconic. In this piece, Warhol specifically chose mugshots in which “the criminals attempt either to stare down the camera or to look so blank as to challenge its capacity to individualize them” (35). Through their completely blank stares, these criminals have attempted to thwart the camera’s attempts to convert them into iconic images. Due to their incarcerated status, these inmates have very limited power to exercise; they do not have the option of not having their photograph taken, and therefore they are being forcibly placed under the image-creating gaze of the camera. In order to avoid this forced iconification, they eliminate all vestiges of “essence” from their gaze, stopping the camera from truly representing them.
In contrast to the mugshots, in photo booths the subject has the power to craft an image of his or herself, however the camera is operated by machine and takes its pictures suddenly and almost surprisingly, once the sequence has started it carries on until through. In the face of this mechanical onslaught, the subjects in Warhol’s photo booth photographs tend to pose or make faces at the camera. In this way, they attempt to shield the “true” image of themselves from the camera due to the fear and anxiety of the camera’s inability to capture their “essence.” These poses in turn tend to look very awkward and self-aware, as the subject specifically attempts to craft an image that is distant from the reality of their self in order to protect their identity from the tyranny of the camera.
Lastly, Warhol discussed the publicity photographs put out to promote stars. In these images, the subject seeks to overcome the mechanical apparatus by crafting a larger than life superstar image to be commodified. For the masses that consume these images, they are imbued with the true essence of the star that they represent – the star using the mechanical power of the camera to their full advantage by representing themselves in the most commodifiable way – in whatever way that best represents their commercial purposes. In this sense, the subject is again fitted within this schematic of anxiety towards the camera – the subject is still forced to construct an image of him or herself, and to the extent that that image is separate from what the subject considers his or her “true” self, the subject has submitted to the imagifying power of the camera and consented to turn him or herself into an image.
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