Black and White Portraits of Andy Warhol in Drag Taken by Christopher Makos, 1981

Andy Warhol called his friend Christopher Makos “the most modern photographer in America.” In 1981, the New York-based photographer and the Pop Art legend retreated to Makos’s studio with a variety of wigs and makeup for a two-day photo session. The result is a series of impressive black and white portraits. Titled Altered Image, the series was a deliberate exploration of gender identity and self-perception, blending Warhol’s fascination with fame, transformation, and pop culture.

Makos, a prominent photographer and part of Warhol’s inner circle, was known for his bold, avant-garde portraits. He had also introduced Warhol to punk and new wave aesthetics. The Altered Image project featured Andy Warhol wearing wigs, heavy makeup, and women’s clothing. However, rather than impersonating specific women, Warhol maintained a blank expression — mirroring his signature emotional neutrality and reinforcing themes of identity ambiguity and artifice.

“He didn’t want to look like a beautiful woman, he wanted to show the way it felt to be beautiful, Makos said. “As the 1980s began, Andy Warhol and I decided that we would collaborate together on a project. Impatient as I was, there was one thing I was sure of. We should do something unique, without imitating anything that had been done before by Andy, whose work by then was world-famous. Later in the ‘80s, Andy would collaborate on painting projects with other friends in our circle like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat. But my collaboration with Andy was about photography.”

“Andy always felt like a weirdo or a freak, never like one of the cool kids,” he said to Dazed. “But whenever we did photoshoots like this, where he could dress up or look his best, he really enjoyed that. The Altered Image project took him to another level.”

In total, they created 365 shots of Warhol in drag, one for each day of the year, and with five different wigs. The Altered Image series is often discussed in the context of queer art history, gender performance, and Warhol’s preoccupation with surface vs. identity. Today, the series is seen as both subversive and introspective, highlighting Warhol’s awareness of the performative aspects of both fame and selfhood.