Imprints of intimacy: Warhol photographer Christopher Makos' exhibition 'Party' oozes sex, grime and glamour

SANTA FE — Photographer Christopher Makos’ solo exhibition, “Party,” at Daniel Cooney Fine Art is a backstage pass to the deliciously decadent New York City social scene of the Studio 54 and CBGB eras. Come party with Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Georgia O’Keeffe, Debbie Harry, BDSM performance artist Richard Gallo, drag icon Divine and Superman himself, Christopher Reeve, plus quite a few naked people.

Daniel Cooney, who recently relocated his gallery to Santa Fe from New York City, gave the Journal an exclusive sneak peek, and said the afternoon opening on Saturday, April 5, will be a party in itself. Makos — a garrulous raconteur — will lead a tour, and local “Trash Disco” legend DJ Oona will be spinning, for those who’d rather dance than talk.

Makos was born in 1948, five years after Larry Clark and five years before Nan Goldin. All three photographers were active in the 1970s and ’80s, taking pictures of queer punks and hustlers with a raw snapshot aesthetic that made even the most cutting-edge street photographers of the 1960s like Lee Friedlander suddenly look like fussy formalists. Kind of like how Lou Reed said the first Ramones record made his own music sound old-fashioned.

But unlike Clark and Goldin, Makos didn’t just photograph people living on the margins of society. He was in the center of the center, photographing the jet-set glitterati for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine.

Makos’ photograph of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler with his jeans halfway unzipped is similar to others he made, like “Happy Trails” and “Biker,” except the unzipped jeans in those images don’t belong to famous people. “Steven Tyler” is not a technically impressive photograph. Makos’ flash blows out his subject, and there’s a weird artifact on the right side of the image — perhaps a scratch on the negative. What is impressive is that Makos was able to establish such intimate rapport with Tyler that the celebrity musician was willing to be photographed with his pants down, literally.

The raw, unfiltered, blown-out look only reinforces the feeling of spontaneity in the image. It’s a party picture, one that anyone could have potentially taken. Except anyone couldn’t have taken it, because other photographers weren’t invited.

The photographs in “Party” date from the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s, when Makos was traveling extensively with Warhol and photographing innumerable party people for Interview Magazine. Interview functioned as an extension of Warhol’s social life, and the amateur feel of Makos’ images dovetails with Warhol’s lifelong disdain for artsy pretentiousness. Warhol called his movies “movies,” not films, and said he wanted them to look like amateur home movies. The interviews he published in Interview were similarly unscripted and unpolished, and they often had a jokey feel. Warhol even kept in all the filler words — the “ums” and “you knows.” So, Makos’ playful, snapshot-style pictures were the perfect complement, aesthetically and tonally, to Interview’s off-the-cuff, behind-the-scenes conversations.

Paparazzi take salacious images of celebrities, but the tabloids who publish them trade in moral judgment and shame. The celebrities in Makos’ photographs, by contrast, are always in on the fun, and he celebrates their lack of inhibition. Makos is a full participant in the parties, too, as evidenced by the fact that the most explicit images in the show are all self-portraits.

Also included in “Party” are several darkroom photomontages and physical collages — usually a simple combination of two images, or the same image repeated. Among these is “Two Sides of Andy,” a pandemic-era collage Makos made by sewing together two vintage photographs of Warhol — both in and out of drag.

Makos’ photomontage of Christopher Reeve features a staggered grid of four slightly overlapping images of the actor, which I believe are identical, although the rhythm of the composition makes it look as though they could be sequential frames from one of Warhol’s “Screen Test” shorts. “Twink,” “Some Socks” and “Early Collage” are similarly reminiscent of filmstrips, and “Double Time” even more so, due to its vertical arrangement and cropping.

Makos’ “Party” is worth seeing in person, even if you can’t make the opening day party. Some photographs are experienced just as well in newspaper reproductions or on laptops as they are framed on gallery walls, but in this case, the vintage gelatin silver prints have a physical presence that marks them as artifacts of an era. The slightly dirty darkroom smudges and the subtle crimping and puckering on the collaged pieces are like the “ums” and “you knows” in an Interview Magazine transcript — imprints of intimacy and authenticity that let us know we’re being let into someone’s secret world.

Imprints of intimacy: Warhol photographer Christopher Makos' exhibition 'Party' oozes sex, grime and glamour