Denis Reynaud, a professor of general culture and applied professional writing at our sister institution, Lyon 2, sent us a copy of this photo, recently uncovered by one of his students. It shows famous pop artist Andy Warhol, standing behind an Auricon motion picture camera, wearing a Wagner College sweatshirt.
"Andy must have stolen it from Wagner's alumnus Gerard Malanga, who was his assistant the time," Reynaud speculated.
Malanga attended Wagner College in the early 1960s during the period when his mentor, Prof. Willard Maas, was organizing the New York City Writer's Conferences at Wagner. (Among the artists in residence at Wagner during that period, in association with the Writer's Conference, was playwright Edward Albee, who used Maas and his wife Marie Menken as inspirations for the lead characters in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") Malanga was Warhol's chief assistant from 1963 to 1970, as well as the lead actor in many of his early films.
This photograph of Andy Warhol was taken in December 1964 during the shooting of his film, "Harlot," which premiered January 10, 1965 at the Cafe au Go Go on Bleecker Street. The photographer was Eve Arnold of Magnum Photos.