William John Kennedy

William John Kennedy was born in 1930 in Glen Cove, NY [on the northern shore of Long Island]. Kennedy served in the US Army for three years as a paratrooper during the Korean War and was honorably discharged in 1953. He studied at Syracuse University, the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute. After working in the mid 1950s for three years as an assistant and studio manager for renowned Vogue fashion photographer Clifford Coffin, Kennedy went on to enjoy a rewarding career as an advertising photographer in New York City.

​

Kennedy’s most intriguing body of work was rediscovered in the mid noughties when he and his wife found a set of negatives and transparencies that he had taken of Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana. William John Kennedy met Robert Indiana at an art opening in 1963 and began taking photographs of him in his Coenties Slip studio. They soon became friends and Indiana then introduced Kennedy to Warhol at The Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963.