Last week, the NYT published a feature on Jay Johnson of Jed Johnson & Associates that I forgot to point out. Jay’s twin Jed started the business and was killed in TWA Flight 800 in 1996. The article tells of how Jay, the less outgoing of the two, stepped into control of the company after his brother’s untimely death. More interesting, however, is the story of how the twins came to find themselves in New York after hitchhiking from Sacramento, and their subsequent meet-up with Andy Warhol. Jed became Andy Warhol’s lover for 12 years.
“It became very exciting, almost instantly,” Mr. Johnson said of their careers as celebrities within Warhol’s circle, traveling between New York, Paris, London and exotic points farther afield. “He worked much harder than I did,” he said of Jed and his ambition. “I played much harder.”
Andy Warhol definitely knew how to spot the male talent. I particularly liked these photos, taken by Billy Name (above) and Cecil Beaton. Even the candid one, taken at Warhol’s factory, is expressive of a raw, youthful energy, and its colorization an apt reference to its milieu.
