The Name Project

The search is on for thousands of negatives of photographs the photographer Billy Name took in Andy Warhol’s Factory in the 1960s, which Name says were given to his onetime agent, Kevin Kushel, who now claims they are being "held captive" by people "who want money."

The New York Times reports:

The disappearance of the negatives has alarmed not just Name and his circle of friends and supporters but also scholars, who describe the images as an important historical record of a pivotal time in art history.

His documentation of that era is really irreplaceable,” said Callie Angell, the adjunct curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Andy Warhol Film Project. “There were really only four photographers around the Factory for any length of time in the 1960s, and Billy Name was the only one of them who lived there. His pictures were Warhol’s press photos. They were his chosen representation of his work.”