Snaps at the Whitney

Diane von Furstenberg, photo by Andy Warhol.

The Polaroid Land camera was the iPhone of its time, but it had a different form factor. Instead of keeping it in your pocket, you carried it around like the expensive toy that it was. The ritual of each shot – watching the white square emerge with a whir and click, morphing like an Etch-A-Sketch into a shimmering image, the owner pulling it free and handing it to you – contrasts with today's routine of casual selfies. Back then, instant gratification was the exception, rather than the rule it is today.

I went to see the Whitney's exhibition Andy Warhol Family Album, a collection of his Polaroid photos from 1972-73, with mixed expectations. My mind's eye had somehow blown them up into canvas-sized images layering shapes and color. For some reason, I conflated photography with painting. I wasn't sure what I would find, but I knew they were artifacts from a different time.

Tucked away on the museum's seventh floor, in an area free of signage, Warhol's snaps lined the walls, rows of white squares reflecting the afternoon light. Shots of Bianca Jagger, Andy himself, Lee Radziwill, Diane von Furstenberg. Casual portraits taken in anonymous rooms, a fading reference to fame and fashion.

I thought of the critic Hilton Als, whose Instagram account holds more than eight thousand images: head shots of artists, actors, writers and musicians, photos of book covers, stills from movies. Many of his celebrities occupy that same white square, digitally created for the most part, some actual Polaroids re-photographed for the Web.

Als is a generous curator whose work includes the Alice Neel exhibit at the David Zwirner gallery in 2017. Those were paintings, mostly of New Yorkers: some who were ordinary, and others who were celebrities. Warhol's Polaroids capture the ordinary moments of celebrities, a different take on the same city.