Bill Kennedy, the photographer who shot Andy Warhol in a field of flowers, dies in Miami
Pop artist Andy Warhol’s photographs, paintings and films still help define the 1960s. Will Warhol’s iconic “Campbell’s Soup Cans” silkscreen from 1962, for instance, ever not be a part of our collective memories?
But who shot the photogenic Warhol?
One who did, and whose photographs of Warhol have been exhibited nationally — including “Andy Warhol at the Factory Holding Marilyn Acetate l” as the centerpiece of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh — was fine art photographer William John Kennedy.
Kennedy, with his “genial smile, long blond hair, hugs and flair for the fantastic,” said his team at Kiwi Arts Group, had made South Florida his home since 1984. Kennedy moved from New York City with his wife Marie Kennedy, a retired high school language arts English teacher.
Kennedy died at his Downtown Miami home that he shared with his wife of 57 years on Dec. 16, while under hospice care following a massive stroke, Marie said. He was 91.
“We concentrated on the romance and Bill was the love of my life,” she said. “He was a very, very exciting guy. He was fabulous. I will miss him but I have so many beautiful memories that I cannot be sad. I just think about how much I loved him. We traveled all over the world on photographic assignments and we had the most fabulous life.”
Like his famous subjects, which also included pop artist Robert Indiana, famed for his 1965 “LOVE” print, Kennedy had a keen eye, an innate observational sense of pop culture and nature and the ability to put his subjects at ease.
“If he didn’t know you, and you didn’t know him, Andy Warhol was very beige,” Kennedy told Insider in 2012 when his exhibit, “Before They Were Famous: Behind the Lens of William John Kennedy” was on tour in Manhattan. The exhibit was also featured at the SCOPE Miami art show in 2011.
“I always had to ask him questions, poke around and provoke conversation, but then a rainbow of ideas came flowing from him,” Kennedy told Insider.
That colorful rush of ideas was also descriptive of Kennedy’s skills with his camera.
Warhol in a field of flowers
Kennedy’s wife Marie recalls the time the pair were tooling around Queens, New York, in their Volkswagen Beetle in 1964 after an afternoon spent scuba diving in Long Island. Kennedy was an avid sportsman, too.
“This is just an example of Bill’s eye. We passed by a deserted lot that was filled with garbage and junk. But it was also filled with thousands of these exquisite Black-Eyed Susans, these gorgeous flowers,” Marie said. An eye-catching oasis of color, some of these flowers reached eight-feet tall.
At the same time, Warhol, whom Kennedy had befriended — and who may have been a bit smitten by the dashing Kennedy, Marie recalled — was working on his own paintings of flowers.
Kennedy was inspired.
“Bill contacted Andy when we got home into the city and he said, ‘Andy, I want to take you out to this lot, this deserted lot right now on Long Island. And I want to photograph you with some of your artwork,’” Marie said.
“A couple of days later Bill and I picked up Andy and Taylor Mead,” a writer and actor who appeared in several of Andy Warhol’s underground films filmed at Warhol’s Factory. “Andy rolled up these flower canvases that he did and threw them in the trunk of our Volkswagen at the time. These things that he rolled up are now selling for a billion dollars. I should have taken one of them,” Marie said, chuckling. “Anyway, Andy brought along several of his flower paintings and we used them as a backdrop for the picture.”
That “Warhol Flowers Xlll” image is a part of Kennedy’s portfolio and the exhibit, “Before They Were Famous: Behind the Lens of William John Kennedy.”
“He was a brilliant self-promoter,” Kennedy told the Miami Herald of Warhol in 2011 when the photograph was on exhibit at SCOPE Miami. The visual artists bonded as Warhol’s career was taking off in the early 1960s. “He realized to get the exposure he wanted he would have to play that game with the art power structure, and he did it magnificently.”
Kennedy’s early life
.jpg "image001 (4).jpg")
Kennedy was born in Glen Cove, New York, on March 4, 1930.
His early life was marked by tragedy.
When Kennedy’s father was en route to the hospital to see his newborn son for the first time, he was killed in a car accident, Marie said. Kennedy’s mother died from strep throat when he was 7. Kennedy and his sister Kay, who predeceased him, were raised by a great aunt and her husband in Garden City, a village in Long Island.
His great aunt was an accomplished archaeologist and her husband worked on Wall Street, Marie said. His great aunt took her niece and nephew to all the museums and art exhibitions. “She imbued him with a love of art and nature. She adored animals. God, he was an animal lover. We always had cats and she imbued Bill with fishing and a love of the outdoors.”
That outdoors lifestyle is why Bill and Marie Kennedy, who started living together in 1960 when their first marriages ended and who wed in 1964, moved to South Florida, she said. Today, Marie laughs when she recalls the era in which they entered into their relationship. Living together in 1960? íQuel scandale!
Kennedy studied fine art at Syracuse University School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute. His studies were interrupted by the Korean War, during which he served as a paratrooper, jumping out of planes many times, his wife said. He was honorably discharged as a master sergeant and returned to New York City to a studio on 23rd Street.
Kennedy’s career
There, Kennedy’s talents caught the eye of Vogue fashion photographer Clifford Coffin, for whom he worked as a photographic assistant and studio manager in the 1950s. Kennedy then started his own commercial career and was a freelance advertising agency photographer.
Kennedy’s images were featured in Life and Sports Illustrated magazines. Corporate clients included Avon, IBM, Nabisco and American Express.
His work led him to befriend fellow artists Warhol and Indiana. Kennedy simply had a knack for capturing extraordinary people’s ordinary selves before they became household names.
“The images he created in 1963-1964 capture the two artists in an unprecedented way, depicting their soon-to-be iconic works at the seminal point of their careers and at the birth of the Pop Art movement. It was as if Kennedy was prescient of their unimaginable future fame,” said the team at Kiwi Arts Group in a statement for the Miami Herald.
Kiwi Arts Group, with offices in Fort Lauderdale and London, represents Kennedy’s work.
The William John Kennedy archive also includes portraits of Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Mario Amaya, Dorothy Miller, Henry Geldzahler, and Warhol stars Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet.
Meeting a young Pacino
“When we lived in New York City we went to parties at Andy’s Factory, where we met Al Pacino,” Kennedy’s wife said. “Oh, I remember Al Pacino. He was like 5-feet, 6-inches tall. A little itsy-bitsy, tiny guy. He was an absolute unknown when we ran into him at one of the parties at The Factory. But he was there, a funny guy.”
Kennedy lived to see his photographs included in the collections of numerous museums.
Among them: the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Boca Raton Museum of Art; Polk Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Indiana State University; New York University; Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Collection of BNY Mellon.
“His works will continue to shed light on his remarkable talent for decades to come, reminding us of a period in time that was the beginning of a social revolution around the world,” Kiwi Arts Group said.
Survivors
In addition to his wife Marie, Kennedy is survived by her children, Charles and Diane Forve, and her granddaughter Jodie Forve.
There will be no services. “They’re going to be bringing the ashes to me,” Marie said. “And when I die, my granddaughter has been instructed to make darn sure that my ashes are mixed in with Bill’s. And my granddaughter is going to keep the ashes and when she dies, she wants to be mixed in with us. The three of us will be together forever.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 3:51 PM.
