Warhol’s Queens offers a surprising mosaic consisting of his portraits of royal queens and images of drag queens. For Andy Warhol (1928–1987), both genuine as well as fake queens slipped into the role of idealized movie-star femininity, devoting their lives to handing down a glittering and sparkling way of life and presenting it to the public for (not all too) close inspection.

The volume juxtaposes Warhol’s Polaroids of Princess Caroline of Monaco, Farah Diba Pahlavi, and Crown Princess Sonja, now Queen Sonja of Norway, with drag queens, all of whom Warhol characterized as “living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be.” Warhol’s Queens presents intense faces with exceptionally colored lips, eyes, and hair that serve as sexual fetishes and are too tempting to be resisted.

Along with in-depth scholarly essays, this book is a must both for Warhol fans as well as anyone interested in photography and portraiture.