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.

Christopher Makos is an American photographer known for capturing the energy, personalities, and shifting cultural currents of New York from the 1970s onward. A protégé of Man Ray and a close friend of Andy Warhol, Makos emerged at the intersection of art, fashion, and celebrity portraiture, bringing a sharp, modern, and often irreverent perspective to the medium. His background in both photojournalism and avant-garde experimentation allowed him to move fluidly between documenting real moments and crafting images that feel staged, performative, and iconic.

Makos is best known for his intimate photographs of Warhol, including the celebrated Altered Image series, where he transformed Warhol into a set of gender-bending personas—a radical exploration of identity and image in the early 1980s. His access to the Factory and downtown art scene gave him a unique vantage point to chronicle figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Debbie Harry, and countless others at formative moments in their careers. These portraits capture not just likeness but atmosphere: the charisma, chaos, and creative electricity of New York’s cultural vanguard.

Across his broader practice, Makos pairs clean, graphic compositions with a candid, spontaneous sensibility. Whether photographing artists, musicians, or everyday street scenes, he brings a sense of immediacy that blurs documentation and storytelling. His work ultimately reflects a deep understanding of how images construct myth—how a photograph can become the definitive version of a person, a moment, or an era.