America

'He created his own universe and became its star' David Cronenberg, Guardian Andy Warhol carried a camera with him everywhere he went and, taken from ten years of extraordinary shots, his America aspires to the strange beauty and staggering contradictions of the country itself. Exploring his greatest obsessions - including image and celebrity - he photographs wrestlers and politicians, the beautiful wealthy and the disenfranchised poor, Capote with the fresh scars of a facelift and Madonna hiding beneath a brunette bob. He writes about the country he loves, wishing he had died when he was shot, commercialism, fame and beauty. An America without Warhol is almost as inconceivable as Warhol without America, and this touching, witty tribute is the great artist of the superficial at his most deeply personal.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was a painter, graphic artist filmmaker, and leader of the Pop Art movement. He also produced a significant body of film work, including the famous Chelsea Girls. Equally well known in the late Sixties and early Seventies as resident host at his studio, the Factory. Andy Warhol died following gall bladder surgery, in New York on the 22nd February 1987. As Warhol said: 'I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.'