Screen Tests

The Screen Tests are a series of short, silent, black-and-white film portraits by Andy Warhol, made between 1964 and 1966, generally showing their subjects from the neck up against plain backdrops.

The Screen Tests, of which 472 survive, depict a wide range of figures, many of them part of the mid-1960s downtown New York cultural scene.

Under Warhol's direction, subjects of the Screen Tests attempted to sit motionless for around three minutes while being filmed, with the resulting movies projected in slow motion.

Warhol varied the shooting conditions for individual films, changing the number of lights or their angles to alter the pattern of shadow on the subjects' faces and the backdrops behind them or using different lens aperture settings.

[2]: 15  They were not screen tests in the general sense of the film industry, in that they were conceived as independent works of art and not a way of choosing people to act in a production.

Black-and-white image of a woman with short light hair shown from the neck up against a light background. Her head fills the center of the image from top to bottom and casts a shadow on the background to her right.
Still from a Screen Test of Edie Sedgwick , 1964
Black-and-white image of a page from a booklet of wanted criminals. There are front and side view mug shots of a man at the top of the page, and text describing crimes he committed below.
Page from NYC Police Department booklet, The Thirteen Most Wanted , 1962