A woman who sued Andy Warhol and won after he used one of her photos has died.
Patricia Caulfield was 91.
Caulfield was an editor at Modern Photography magazine in the 1960s. She sued Warhol after he used a photo she had taken of hibiscus blossoms after she published the image in an article in June 1964. The artist had reached out to the magazine, asking to buy the photo, but he didn’t want to pay the price they named.
Instead, according to a lawsuit Caulfield filed in 1966, Warhol cut the photo from the magazine, cropped it and made silkscreen paintings of the image to create his “Flowers” series of art. The series was displayed at the Leo Castelli Gallery in Manhattan in November 1964, just months after the photo’s initial publication.
“He didn’t think it would be a big thing, but ‘Flowers’ sold like crazy,” Caulfield’s sister Kathleen Hall told The New York Times.
Caulfield and Warhol settled, and part of the agreement was that Warhol would make two new “Flowers” paintings, which eventually sold for $6,000. Caulfield received 25% of the royalties from the original “Flowers” prints.
Her suit against Warhol was one of several where photographers sued the artist for using their images to create his work, according to The Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts.
Caulfield eventually left Modern Photography and became a freelance photojournalist, focusing on the environment and wildlife.
“I guess there’s the hope somebody may see my photographs and think, ‘that’s a wonderful animal, maybe it’s worth making an effort to save,’” Caulfield told the Knight-Ridder in 1977, the Times reported. “But at least I’m effective in making a record of something before it all gets ruined.”
Caulfield was born in Chicago on March 17, 1932. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a nurse. She attended the University of Rochester and started picking up photography after appearing on a television show hosted by the curator of the then-George Eastman House. She moved to San Francisco after graduating in 1953, taking photography courses at night and working at a camera store during the day. Caulfield was eventually hired by Modern Photography in New York as a secretary, but within 11 years had been named executive editor, the Times reported.
In addition to Modern Photography, her photos also appeared in National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The American Sportsman publications. She also published several books.
Her library of photographs was recently donated to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Caulfield died at a Manhattan assisted living facility on July 16, the Times reported. She leaves behind her sister.
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