NEW YORK, NY.- Billy Name, the in-house photographer at Andy Warhol’s studio and one of the few surviving members of the Factory, died at the age of 76 in Highland, New York on Monday, July 18.

Born William Linich Jr. in 1940, Name grew up in Poughkeepsie, NY. In 1958 he settled in Manhattan and became involved in the avant garde downtown art scene working for the Fluxus group, Yoko Ono and LaMonte Young. He met Warhol in 1959 and it was Warhol who renamed him Billy Name. Besides being Warhol’s assistant, he was also his lover.

While known as the Factory’s photographer, Name was the one who redecorated Warhol’s space by covering the walls in silver spray paint and aluminum foil. The space was hailed as ‘the place to see and be seen” and attacted New York’s demimonde. While the silver décor seemed to evoke a sense of futurism of Warhol’s work, Name said he was inspired by the repainting of the Mid-Hudson Bridge in Poughkeepsie when he was a child.

As the staff photographer for the Factory, Name captured such superstars as Edie Sedgwick, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground and Nico. When he left the factory in 1970, he went into a self-imposed exile and was neglected by the art world for many years. It was only in the past ten years that Name’s career had a renaissance which was the result of exhibitions of his photographs of the Factory both in the United States and abroad and the publication of a number of books on his life and career