Christopher Makos

Christopher Makos is an American photographer known for his intimate and energetic documentation of the New York art scene in the 1970s and 1980s, capturing the rise of cultural icons with an insider’s eye. His photography is most celebrated for its close relationship with Andy Warhol, with whom he shared both a deep personal friendship and a collaborative creative rapport. Makos photographed Warhol in unguarded, everyday moments as well as in carefully staged portraits, revealing sides of the artist rarely seen by the public. These images offer an essential counterbalance to Warhol’s manufactured celebrity persona, showing him as reflective, humorous, and human.

Makos’s lens also engaged closely with the next generation of New York visionaries, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He captured both artists at formative points in their careers, documenting their studios, their social circles, and their rapid ascent into global fame. His photographs of Basquiat often emphasize the artist’s intensity and charisma, while his portraits of Haring highlight his openness, playfulness, and magnetic optimism. Together, these bodies of work form a vivid archive of a pivotal cultural era, illustrating Makos’s ability to record not only faces but the pulse of a movement.

Through his proximity, trust, and stylistic clarity, Makos created some of the most enduring images of Warhol, Basquiat, and Haring, offering viewers a rare window into the personal worlds of artists who reshaped contemporary culture.