At the National Gallery through September 16th hang 79 of American poet Allen Ginsberg's photographs from the ‘50s-‘80s, including his popular "drugstore" prints. Ginsberg was not a serious photographer, but began taking pictures of friends with a second-hand Kodak camera. He ended up finding the pictures many years later, impressed by what someone who was at the time an amateur had produced. They are autobiographical; just pictures of himself, some family and colleagues, including Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs to name a few. The photos mostly document Ginsberg’s young life as an iconoclast in New York City’s East Village, before he became a published author, or gave rise to a generation of beats. Below nearly every image is Ginsberg's own handwritten inscription, his poetic interpretations of each moment. He effortlessly captures interest in every picture--his talent for photography is plain undeniable. Intimate and intuitive.
My Beat Memories picks:
Inscription: Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th Street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cox, "The Letter-Carrier's Friend" in Tompkins Square toward corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he's making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan.
1953
gelatin silver print, printed 1984–1997
image: 29.2 x 45.1 cm (11 1/2 x 17 3/4 in)
Inscription: Neal Cassady and his love of that year the star-cross'd Natalie Jackson conscious of their rôles in Market Street Eternity: Cassady had been prototype for Jack Kerouac's 1950 On the Road saga hero Dean Moriarty, as later in 1960's he'd taken the driver's wheel of Ken Kesey's psychedelic-era day-glo painted Merry Prankster crosscountry bus "Further." Neal's illuminated American automobile mania, "unspeakably enthusiastic" friendship & erotic energy had already written his name in brightlit signs of our literary imaginations before movies were made imitating his charm. That's why we stopped under the marquee to fix the passing hand on the watch, San Francisco, maybe March 1955.
1955
gelatin silver print, printed 1984–1997
image: 24.9 x 38 cm (9 7/8 x 14 7/8 in)
Inscription: Francesco Clemente looking over hand-script album with new poem I'd written out for his Blake-inspired watercolor illuminations, we'd done two books before; entrance corner of his loft overlooking Great Jones Street Manhattan, October 1984. He liked this picture.
1984
gelatin silver print, printed 1984–1997
image: 40.4 x 27 cm (15 7/8 x 10 5/8 in)
Inscription: I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window, one day recognized my own world the familiar background, a giant wet brick-walled undersea Atlantis garden, waving ailanthus ("stinkweed") "Trees of Heaven," with chimney pots along Avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments' upper floors two blocks distant on 14th Street, I focus'd on the raindrops along the clothesline. "Things are symbols of themselves," said Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984
1984
gelatin silver print, printed 1984–1997
image: 42 x 28 cm (16 1/2 x 11 in)
Inscription: Myself seen by William Burroughs, Kodak Retina new-bought 2'd hand from Bowery hock-shop, our apartment roof Lower East Side between Avenues B & C, Tompkins Park trees under new antennae. Alan Ansen, Gregory Corso & Jack Kerouac visited, Jack's The Subterraneans records much of the scene, Burroughs & I edited letter-manuscripts he'd sent from Mexico & South America, Alene Lee ("Mardou Fox" of The Subterraneans) typed final drafts. Neighborhood was heavily Polish & Ukranian, some artists, junkies, medical students, cheap restaurants like "Leshkos" corner 7th & A, rent was only ¼ of my monthly $120 wage as newspaper copyboy. Time of "The Green Automobile" poem to Cassady, Fall 1953.
1953
gelatin silver print, printed 1984–1997
image: 28.6 x 43.8 cm (11 1/4 x 17 1/4 in)
