Scars by Brigid Berlin

Brigid Berlin (1939–2020) was one of the most distinctive and uncompromising artists to emerge from Andy Warhol’s Factory. A painter, performer, photographer, and archivist, she created a body of work shaped by the humor, vulnerability, intensity, and creative freedom of the underground world she inhabited for more than five decades.

Born into privilege as the daughter of newspaper publisher Richard Berlin and socialite Muriel “Honey” Berlin, she rejected the expectations of her upbringing in favor of a life of artistic experimentation. By the mid-1960s, Berlin had become a central figure in the community surrounding Warhol’s Factory, where she formed close relationships with the artists, writers, musicians, and performers who helped define New York’s avant-garde.

Known affectionately as “Brigid Polk,” Berlin became renowned for her performances, tape recordings, Polaroids, and fearless documentation of her own life and the people around her. Her work looked beyond the mythology of the Factory, capturing not only its glamour and creativity, but also its humor, disorder, intimacy, and humanity.

Between 1968 and 1974, Berlin produced thousands of Polaroids and hundreds of hours of audio recordings, transforming everyday experiences and personal relationships into an ongoing artistic archive. The body was also central to her practice. Beginning in 1966, she created her celebrated “Tit Prints,” using ink impressions of her own body as a form of self-portraiture. She later developed a series of handmade “Trip Books,” in which photographs, handwriting, collected material, and physical impressions were organized around specific subjects.

The origins of Scars can be traced to 1970, when Berlin photographed Andy Warhol during Alice Neel’s portrait session with him. Her images recorded the scars left by the 1968 shooting at Warhol’s studio at 33 Union Square West. Fascinated by the personal histories contained in such marks, Berlin began assembling a new Trip Book in 1971. She invited friends and visitors to the Factory to make ink impressions of their scars and describe, in their own handwriting, how they had received them.

The resulting work, Scars by Brigid Polk, was published by Telegraph Books in 1972. By combining bodily impressions with handwritten testimony, Berlin transformed private wounds into a collective portrait of New York’s avant-garde community. Contributors included Peter Fonda, Viva, Taylor Mead, Patti Smith, Gerard Malanga, Brice Marden, Geneviève Waïte, Larry Rivers, John Giorno, René Ricard, Peter Beard, Lillian Roxon, and Bill Berkson.

“After meeting Victor Bockris and Andrew Wylie, partners at the small publishing imprint Telegraph Books, it makes sense that Brigid would agree to publish one of her conceptual books with them—a Trip Book of ink prints of people’s scars, with the subjects describing how they got their scars in their own handwriting.”
—Vincent Fremont

Originally issued as a limited artist’s book, Scars became a rare and sought-after document of Berlin’s practice. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication, The Waverly Press restored every page and expanded the book with new essays by Vincent Fremont and Victor Bockris, both of whom were directly connected to the creation and publication of the 1972 edition.

“When I look back at our attempt to capture the cutting-edge voices of the early seventies in the ten books we published, there is no question that Brigid Polk’s Scars was by far the most creative, original and valuable book we published.”
—Victor Bockris

The Deluxe Edition is limited to 30 copies. Each book bears Brigid Berlin’s estate signature stamp, is signed by Vincent Fremont, and is individually numbered. It also includes a 4 × 5-inch archival pigment print made from one of Berlin’s original 1971 Polaroids of Andy Warhol’s scars. Each print is individually numbered and bears the Brigid Berlin estate stamp.

Scars is both an artist’s book and a collective record of personal history. Through ink, handwriting, photography, and testimony, Berlin transformed the marks carried by the body into an intimate document of the people and relationships that shaped her world.

Edited by Dagon James in collaboration with Brigid Berlin, Vincent Fremont, and Victor Bockris.