RIP Billy Name

by Chris Nelson

Billy Name (born William Linich Jr), creator and documentarian of Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory, has died at the age of 76, from a variety of chronic conditions.

In 1964, Andy Warhol met Billy Name, then a hairstylist, at one of Name’s haircutting parties in his Lower East Side apartment, which had been covered in solver foil and silver paint. Warhol invited Name to do the same at the artist’s new loft on East 47th Street, which became the original Factory. Name did so, as well as install all the lighting and sound equipment.

In return for making over his loft, Warhol gave Name a new role in the Factory, in-house photographer. Moving more into filmmaking, Warhol gave Name is Pentax camera, with which Name developed his signature high-contrast black-and-white style of photography. Name also moved in and the two became lovers, allowing Name a unique, intimate view of the goings-on at the space and the Superstars, celebrities, and socialites who came and went.

“After Andy was shot,” Name told The New Yorker in 2012, “he became what I thought of as a cardboard Andy. He became less fun and the work became less fun. It was a big trauma, and Andy changed. The early years were just thrilling. You felt it in your heart and it spoke to you. All this creative work you were doing. It was a wonderful experience…Everyone was here and there were all these revolutions — the women’s revolution, the black revolution, the gay revolution. We were intellectuals, and we just did our own thing for art.”

Andy Warhol