Gerard Joseph Malanga (born March 20, 1943) is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, actor, curator, and archivist. He is best known for his work with Pop artist Andy Warhol at the Factory from 1963 to 1970. The New York Times described him as "Andy Warhol's most important associate."
Initially employed as Warhol's studio assistant, Malanga helped produce his silkscreen paintings and later became a founding editor of Warhol's Interview magazine. As a Warhol superstar, he also appeared in several underground films, including Soap Opera (1964), Vinyl (1965), and Chelsea Girls (1966).
Malanga is also a prolific photographer whose work spans over four decades and includes portraits, nudes, and the urban documentation of "New York's Changing Scene." Malanga, who is primarily a poet, considered his portraits to be "poetry on film." He has directed several films and written books. In 2024, Malanga was elected as a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
Malanga was born on March 20, 1943, in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, and raised on Fordham Road. He was the only child of Italian immigrant parents. His father, Gerardo Malanga, was a dry goods salesman. His early drawing ability was supported by his parents, who signed him up for an after-school art program.
In 1959, Malanga became a regular on Alan Freed's The Big Beat, televised on Channel 5 (WNEW) in New York City.
By his senior year, Malanga was interested in becoming a poet, but he was also studying graphic design and advertising at the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan. In 1960, he graduated from high school with a major in Advertising Design. After graduating, Malanga enrolled at the University of Cincinnati's' College of Art & Design but flunked out within a year. He subsequently met Wagner College professor Willard Maas, whose Brooklyn Heights apartment served as a literary salon. Impressed by Malanga's poetry, Maas encouraged him to restart his studies at Wagner College on Staten Island and, in 1961, secured him a fellowship on the condition that he maintain top grades.
At Wagner, Malanga became part of a writing community. He befriended one of his English professors, Willard Maas, and his wife Marie Menken, who became his mentors. He also made friends with Saul Bellow and Robert Lowell. He attended a symposium with Kay Boyle, Frank O'Hara, LeRoi Jones, and Kenneth Koch. Malanga won the first Gotham Book Mart Avant-Garde Poetry Prize. He was also an editor for the journal Wagner Literary Magazine.
In 1963, Malanga was looking for a summer job when poet Charles Henri Ford introduced him to Pop artist Andy Warhol. Malanga had previously silkscreened fabrics for a necktie designer, and Warhol needed assistance with silkscreening. He was immediately hired by Warhol at $1.25 per hour. "The first was the Elizabeth Taylor portrait. Ethel Scull 36 Times, Elvis Presley, Death and Disasters—we put out a lot of stuff, just the two of us," Malanga recalled. In September, Malanga accompanied Warhol on a cross-country drive to California along with Wynn Chamberlain and Taylor Mead for Warhol's solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. He never returned to Wagner College. "That summer job lasted seven years," he said.
Malanga was also involved in Warhol's filmmaking at the Factory. He appeared in films such as Kiss (1964), Harlot (1964), Soap Opera (1964), Couch (1964), Vinyl (1965), and Camp (1965). He played a combination of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby in Warhol's film Since (1966).
Malanga dated model and debutante Susan Bottomly in 1966. After introducing her to Warhol, she was given the new moniker International Velvet. Malanga and Bottomly costarred in the film Chelsea Girls (1966).
In 1966, Malanga choreographed a dance for Warhol's multimedia presentation, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring musical performances by the Velvet Underground and Nico.
Malanga and Warhol collaborated on the nearly 500 individual 3-minute Screen Tests, which resulted in a selection for a book of the same name, published by Kulchur Press, in 1967. He co-produced Bufferin (1967), in which he reads his poetry and diaries. It is deemed to be the longest spoken-word movie on record at 33-minutes nonstop.
In 1967, Malanga traveled to Italy to screen his film In Search of the Miraculous at the Bergamo Film Festival. While visiting friends in Rome, he ran out of money and reached out to Warhol for financial assistance. When Warhol did not respond, Malanga decided to make another film instead. To finance the project, he forged a Warhol painting based on images of the corpse of Che Guevara, the recently deceased leader of the Cuban Revolution, and attempted to sell it as an authentic work. He wrote to Warhol explaining his plan and asking for his cooperation, but, receiving no reply, proceeded with the scheme and arranged an exhibition at Galleria La Tartaruga in February 1968. Malanga had a prospective buyer willing to pay $3,000. When gallerist Plinio De Martiis sought to confirm that the work could legally be sold, he contacted Warhol's New York dealer, Leo Castelli, who informed Warhol of the situation. Warhol claimed that the painting was authentic, apparently to protect Malanga from imprisonment, but told De Martiis that Malanga was not authorized to sell it because it belonged to Warhol's private collection.
Upon returning to New York, Malanga apologized to Warhol for the forgeries and resumed work at the Factory after Warhol survived an assassination attempt in June 1968. During his absence, Warhol had asked his boyfriend Jed Johnson to take over as his assistant, but Johnson did not like the hands-on, messy work of silkscreening, prompting Warhol to call Malanga back. After completing a painting of Dominique T., Malanga shifted his focus to editing the College Rental Service for Warhol's films and managing bookings. In 1969, Malanga managed the "Andy Warhol Theater: Boys to Adore Galore" under his company, Poetry on Film. The theater showed male pornographic films for six weeks. He hired Jim Carroll to work in the box office and fellow Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro as the projectionist. Later that year, Malanga became a founding editor of Warhol's Interview magazine, a role he kept until he left the Factory in 1970.
In the 1970s, more fake Warhol screen prints appeared in Europe, and Warhol suspected they were made by Malanga. Malanga denied that he had done them, but this created a strain in their relationship. In a December 1976 diary entry, Warhol said: "Ran into Gerard Malanga. Gerard wrote to Fred asking why he wouldn't let him do photography for Interview, I guess he just wants a press pass. Fred won't have anything to do with Gerard because we're still getting repercussions from all the fake Electric Chairs we think he did, they're being resold and resold and each time the money involved gets bigger, so Fred isn't about to give Gerard anything."
By the time Malanga left Warhol's Factory to pursue photography in 1970, he had already written numerous poetry books. Malanga does not view photography as a substitute for poetry but as a complementary practice, describing his portraits as "poetry on film." He characterized poetry as an introspective, solitary act and photography as outward-facing and immediate; together, they formed his distinctive mode of self-expression. This relationship occasionally intersected in his writing, where poems reflect photographic processes, though his photographs themselves resist literary interpretation, with narrative reserved for poetry. Nearly all major poetry magazines published his work.
His career in photography began in 1969 when The Paris Review commissioned him to interview poet Charles Olson. As the magazine paired interviews with portraits, Malanga photographed Olson himself; the resulting image was widely acclaimed and marked the start of his photographic practice. Largely self-taught and working intuitively, he went on to build an extensive archive of portraits, photographing figures such as Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Duke Ellington, Jasper Johns, and Tennessee Williams.