“Billy lived in the Factory for 10 years, and was Andy Warhol’s lover for a while, documenting everything,” says director Alexa Karolinski of Becoming Billy Name, a short documentary that turns the lens on the archivist and artist who spray-painted and covered the Factory silver. "He was the one who cradled Warhol, waiting for help after Valerie Solanas shot him."

Scrolling through a list of Warhol disciples, what strikes most is how many of them are no longer with us: they burned bright in the hothouse atmosphere of the Factory but many did not make it out the other side. One who did escape was Billy Name (née Billy Linich) the erstwhile Poughkeepsie-born documentarian of the scene who ditched Warhol and co by leaving a succinct note on his door and never returning.

Name’s pictures haven’t saturated our pictorial landscape like a lot of Warhol-era imagery has: at a recent Manhattan exhibition opening, eager Factory acolytes lined up around the block to see his work. The now grizzled and bearded artist lives a contented Buddhist existence in Poughkeepsie. “A lot of the Factory superstars held a grudge against Andy Warhol for a long time,” says Karolinski. "Billy is one of the few people to come out of it who, to this day, is grateful towards Warhol—to that time and what it taught him.”

Rebecca Guinness is Editor-at-Large at NOWNESS.