Long before iPhone and “point and shoot” cameras, artist Andy Warhol was one of the very few who recognized the power of using Polaroid cameras in informal settings to capture American celebrity and culture images from the 1960s until his death in 1987.

Taking along a Polaroid “Big Shot” model which weighed over two pounds, with a lens that extended almost nine inches, Warhol recorded the full range of New York City life. From portraits of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Jane Fonda, the hip nightlife of the Big Apple, or surreal still lifes of Perdue chicken, the artist built a visual diary of a particular time in America.

Now with some of the best examples of Warhol’s work brought together by the Academy Art Museum in Easton from the permanent collection of Salisbury University Art Galleries, AAM’s curator Mehves Lelic talks to the Spy earlier this week about Warhol’s technique and lasting contribution to American photography in preparation of the exhibition, “Andy Warhol’s Accidental Icons,” which opens in late October this year.

This video is approximately three. minutes in length. For more information about Accidental Icons: Warhol’s Photography please go here.

Andy Warhol’s Accidental Icons
Academy Art Museum
October 23, 2020 – January 17, 2021

To the countless enjoyment of hundreds of thousands living on or near the Chesapeake Bay, the region is now blessed to have some of the country’s finest photographers document for the whole world to see this vast watershed’s rare beauty.

That wasn’t always the case. Three decades ago, when the Baltimore Sun’s award-winning photographer Dave Harp left his job in the 1980s to devote his working life to capturing the Bay on film, he didn’t have much company. While the region had been fortunate in the first half of the 20th century, with the likes of A. Aubrey Bodine and Constance Stuart Larrabee, by the time Harp came on the scene, the subject matter had returned to a kind of no man’s land.

Since those days, Harp has continued his love affair with the Bay, albeit now with the digital photography and aerial photography, but his themes of land meeting water have remained. And now with over one hundred thousand photographs behind him, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has decided to honor this remarkable legacy of work with a major retrospective on Harp’s images. Starting at the end of this month until 2021, the Museum has pulled together fifty of those photos for all to enjoy.

A few weeks ago, the Spy talked to Dave about his work, his approach to photography, and his concerns about the Chesapeake Bay’s future in the 21st Century.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about “Where Land and Water Meet: The Chesapeake Bay Photography of David W. Harp” please go here.