"Superstar Paul Johnson in Andy Warhol’s 13 most beautiful boys"

gelatin silver print

signature stamp and title (ink) on verso, certificated

The Screen Tests are a series of 400 to 500 experimental films by Andy Warhol, which were mainly shot between 1964 and 1966 in the legendary "Silver Factory" in New York. As a rule, the person portrayed had to sit on a chair in front of a screen and was filmed with a still camera for three minutes. The time limit corresponds to the complete passage of a 16 mm film reel. There are always close-ups of the faces, sometimes only the mouth, an eye or another detail can be seen. The effect on the people filmed was extremely varied: some tried to appear cool and showed no emotion, others could not stand the psychological pressure and started to cry or walked away.
Warhol used some of the early screen tests in the films 13 Most Beautiful Women (1964) and 13 Most Beautiful Boys (1965). In the 40-minute silent films, black and white on 16 mm film, there is no plot, only portrait shots of each performer are shown, played back slightly slower than they were recorded.
Andy Warhol wrote about Paul Johnson in Popism: The Warhol Sixties, New York, 1980, p. 124: "Lester Persky had 'discovered' Paul at the discotheque Ondine and brought him around to the Factory. Paul was unbelievably good-looking - like a comic-strip drawing of Mr. America, clean-cut, handsome, very symmetrical (he seemed to be exactly six feet tall and weigh some nice round number). I don't remember how he got the name Paul America, unless it was because he was staying at the Hotel America on West 46th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, a super-funky midtown hotel that was the kind of place Lenny Bruce, say, stayed in."
(Christoph Fuchs)