Billy Name

Billy Name
Billy Name in 2007
Born
William George Linich

(1940-02-22)February 22, 1940
Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.
DiedJuly 18, 2016(2016-07-18) (aged 76)
Known for
  • Photographer
  • filmmaker
  • lighting designer
  • archivist

William George Linich (February 22, 1940 – July 18, 2016), known professionally as Billy Name, was an American photographer, filmmaker, and lighting designer. He was the archivist of The Factory from 1964 to 1970.[1][2] His brief romance and subsequent friendship with Andy Warhol led to substantial collaboration on Warhol's work, including his films, paintings, and sculptures. Linich became Billy Name among the clique known as the Warhol superstars. He was responsible for "silverizing" Warhol's New York studio, the Factory,[3] where he lived until 1970. His photographs of the scene at the Factory and of Warhol are important documents of the pop art era.[4]

In 2001, the United States Postal Service used one of Billy Name's portraits of Warhol when it issued a commemorative stamp of the artist.[5] Name also collaborated with Shepard Fairey with his photograph of Nico, singer with the Velvet Underground and part of the social circle of Warhol's Factory. He photographed the covers for the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat and their eponymous third album as well as the photographs in the gatefold sleeve for The Velvet Underground and Nico (in collaboration with fellow Warhol associate Nat Finkelstein).

  1. ^ Kennedy, Randy (January 8, 2010). "In Search of an Archive of Warhol's Era". The New York Times. Retrieved January 10, 2010.
  2. ^ Celebrity Portraits from the Warhol Factory Years Archived February 1, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, exhibition and catalog from the Irvine Contemporary gallery, Washington, DC.
  3. ^ Steven Watson, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties (2003) Pantheon, New York, p. 123
  4. ^ BILLY NAME'S FACTORY PHOTOGRAPHS by Jessie Wender from the August 3, 2012 issue of The New Yorker Magazine, accessed 2017-06-06
  5. ^ "Billy Name's portrait of Warhol as US postage stamp". Thewaverlypress.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2015.