You’ve incontrovertibly hit the big time when even your ephemera is mounted as art. Yet maybe this was the plan all along as illustrated in “Warhol Snapshots, 1973-1986” in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s A. Alfred Taubman Gallery.

After all, it was Warhol in 1968 who said, “In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” And how right he was: “Warhol Snapshots, 1973-1986” confirms his clairvoyance.

As the UMMA’s gallery statement tells us, Warhol was under no illusion about what he was doing as an artist. He always insisted his art “wasn’t deep or profound in any way—but rather ‘deeply superficial.’”

Right again.

There’s really no better way to describe this exhibit of 118 photographs (in both color and black and white) taken through the latter part of his career. Like just about everything else Warhol created, it’s a marvelous superficiality.

The photos capture the famous — and those earning their 15 minutes only now, in this exhibit — at work and (mostly) play. Often photographed off-the-cuff, but rarely caught unaware, they seem to light up for the camera.

U-M History of Art Ph.D. candidate (and curator of the exhibit) Christina Chang says the photos represent the years Warhol “served as ‘court painter’ to the rich and famous.” Chang adds, “Warhol began to paint commissioned portraits in 1963, making silk-screens from pictures taken in a photo booth set up inside the infamous Factory [his studio from 1962-68], which delivered a strip of potential source images in minutes; he switched over to a Polaroid camera after 1970.

“Most of the Polaroids in the show,” says Chang, “are leftovers from this process — those pictures that were not chosen for the portraits. Warhol would say that he preferred these rejects precisely because they were never meant to be seen and thus more valuable in a way than the ‘money shot.’”

We might therefore call “Warhol Snapshots, 1973-1986” a sort of photographic democracy, a kind of egalitarian art caught in action.

The rich and the famous are most definitely on display, among them Liza Minnelli, Princess Caroline of Monaco and pop crooner Engelbert Humperdinck. Bu there are also twice as many unidentified models. And it’s these photographs that shed the most light on Warhol’s self-image as an artist.

These untitled Polaroid portraits (as well as some nifty examples of black-and-white photojournalism) find his eye restlessly seeking both novelty and significance — perhaps even despite his best efforts. For it must be remembered that for every Marilyn or Jackie O silkscreen, there was also a brutal electric chair or alarming Birmingham race riot that he also chronicled. Like it or not, this is profound art.

Using a “pop” sensibility to level the artistic playing field always made Warhol a sort of latter-day Francisco Goya. As such, the most interesting snapshots in this display are the models and events he catches on the fly.

Mingling his tendency for voyeuristic imagery with a seemingly urgent need to record his surroundings, Warhol proves (again) that he was a master of post-modernism.

Still, it’s the hip and seemingly indifferent Warhol that rules the public’s imagination even today. And it’s appropriate that the UMMA has chosen to garnish this exhibit with samples of rock music from the 1960s-80s. An adjacent slide projector also reinforces the transient nature of this imagery as it merrily clicks away.

After all, the music and the models — indeed, even the photographic technology that Warhol used — have now gone by the wayside. And the only thing left to display is the artful talent of a quicksilver intellect who always claimed he was something otherwise.

John Carlos Cantú is a free-lance writer who reviews art for AnnArbor.com.

“Warhol Snapshots, 1973-1986” will continue through Oct. 25 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 S. State St. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Thursday-Friday; and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 734-763-UMMA.

Want more Warhol? Throughout this month and October, UMMA is screening a series of documentary films from the '60s and '70s in conjunction with "Warhol Snapshots." Next on the schedule are a pair of films about Warhol ("Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol" and "Scenes From the Life of Andy Warhol") on Saturday, Sept. 26 starting at 4 p.m.. All films are screened in the Helmut Stern Auditorium and admission is free.

Also, exhibit curator Christina Chang gives a talk about the show on Sunday, Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. in A. Alfred Taubman Gallery II. For complete details about these events, check out UMMA's programs and tours page.

Plus, if you're attending Grizzly Bear's UMS concert series performance at the Michigan Theater on Saturday, Sept. 26, come early and dress for your 15 minutes of fame. UMMA and UMS will collaborate to sponsor a Warholian photo shoot before the show, with the pictures being uploaded to UMS' Facebook page, UMMA's Flickr page and some even being included among the Warhol works. Note that you must be ticketed for the concert to participate in the photo shoot. More information on Grizzly Bear tickets in this AnnArbor.com story.