Stephen Shore: I made a film Elevator, which is shown in this gallery, and it was shown the same night that Andy Warhol showed a film called The Life of Juanita Castro, and I had the opportunity then to meet him. And I asked if I could come to the Factory and take pictures. He said, “yes."
When I went to the Factory, I was attracted to it because it was exciting. They were fascinating people. It was the center of a lot of things in New York. Andy was very open about his process. What I would see was an artist making decisions over and over again, experimenting, hitting a dead end, seeing a new opening and I think I learned just by exposure what aesthetic thinking was largely about.
In the evening there were usually activities, a party to go to, an opening, and then we would wind up in Little Italy or Chinatown in early hours of the morning and that's when this picture was taken.
One of the things I thought about was seeing Andy in a completely ordinary scene—not at the Factory, not at a fancy New York apartment. He's just sort of slightly out of focus; this highly recognizable person seen as not the subject of the picture but as just one person who just happened to be in this Chinatown restaurant.
