The handwrtitten caption reads, "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. Allen Ginsberg"
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By Edmund White, The New York Review of Books
Both Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs discovered late in life that making works of art is the way to get money. Literature just doesn’t do it. Speaking engagements pay, but eventually they become tiring—or one exhausts the market. Neither of the two had ever been money-mad, but old age requires a bit of a cushion. Burroughs turned to painting. He would set up paint cans in front of blank canvases and then shoot at them; the splatter was the art. Although these paintings are his best-known artworks, they make up only a small part of his output: he did twenty-four shotgun paintings in 1982 and a few more before he died in 1997. According to his friend James Grauerholz, Burroughs turned out more than 1,500 artworks between 1982 and 1996—including stencils and targets, which were almost all brightly colored abstractions—and had his work exhibited in several museums and more than eighty galleries worldwide.
As Ginsberg said:
If you’re famous, you can get away with anything! William Burroughs spent the last ten years painting, and makes a lot more money out of his painting than he does out of his previous writing. If you establish yourself in one field, it’s possible that people then take you seriously in another. Maybe too seriously. I know lots of great photographers who are a lot better than me, who don’t have a big, pretty coffee table book like I have. I’m lucky.
Ginsberg had been taking snapshots of friends with a borrowed camera since the mid-1940s. In 1953 he bought a small Kodak Retina camera for $13 secondhand at a Bowery pawnshop, and for the next ten years he photographed all his friends and activities in a casual, spontaneous way...
READ ON at nybooks.com
Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg by Sarah Greenough (U.K. link.)
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Featured Comment by John Camp: "Ginsburg (with whom I once had a protracted conversation shortly before he was arrested during a 1972 political convention in Miami, and shorter chats a couple of times) was really a pretty mellow guy, and not a bad poet, either. But, like most poets, he had to hustle for a living, and he did, and I don't blame him for doing it—even poets have to eat. Saying that his photos aren't so good is like saying Matthew Brady's photos of the Civil War weren't so good (and often not even Brady's)—but hey, they weren't making art, they were documenting history. Nothing wrong with that."
Featured Comment by Sporobolus: "Knowing Ginsberg's poetry, and having seen him perform it many times, I think makes it easier for me to appreciate his photos; it is not just random spontaneity that Ginsberg practiced (though some other Beats did), but a honed perception and celebration of the moment, in some ways like street photography at its best captures not just whatever, but something which opens us up a bit; and how the street photographer doesn't just walk to the street and start shooting, but they create a lifestyle and a way of thinking that leads them to their subject matter.
"So when reading his notes written on the photos (I have an old copy of Snapshot Poetics, published in 1993), I hear Ginsberg's voice and add my knowledge of the characters to form something much more than just the photo; though some of the images are great on their own, taken as a whole they are more consistently interesting; it's also worth noting what Ginsberg himself wrote about his intent, on the inside cover of Snapshot Poetics:
So what was my motivation to take these pictures in those days, apart from the fun while taking them? Well, I had a sacramental sense of these friends. Soon after I met Burroughs and Keruoac in '44, I realized they were people to learn from. Furthermore I was in love with them both in one way or another....
"So 'If you're famous you can get away with anything!' seems like more an expression of how Ginsberg exploited his cache of photographs, not why he took them in the first place; and it's worth noting that many of his photos were taken well before he was even slightly famous
"People often get hung up on Ginsberg's frank expression of his own urges and foibles; morally, i think he was essentially no different from the rest of us, except he devoted himself to not hiding his thoughts, and so he was much more honest than most; that is a good trait for a poet."
There was thing on NPR some some months ago about Allen Ginsberg's photographs, and the person being interviewed was going on about what an amazing, amazing photographer Allen Ginsberg was.
I'd seen a book a Allen Ginsberg's photographs some years before that, and frankly, I was not that impressed. I thought the only thing that made his photos unique were the people in them, who, by accident of history, became famous. Otherwise, they looked to me like the stuff that would go in a family photo album.
So I guess Ginsberg, as quoted above, is right. I do think it's funny how, just because someone is famous for one thing, they're suddenly considered to be supremely talented in all other areas--and stuff like Ginsberg's photos are considered as "showing the work of a superior photographer" --even when they really don't. Kind of an "emperor's new clothes" thing.
Posted by: Paul W. Luscher | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 12:02 PM
"As Ginsberg said:
If you’re famous, you can get away with anything! "
This was probably the most profoundly insightful revelation that Ginzberg ever had. It's more of a bulls-eye today than he could ever have imagined.
These guys came and went while I was still relieving myself in cotton cloths so I've no direct recollection of the "beat" guys. But they sure did seem to have a good time with themselves, becoming intoxicated by breathing each others' exhaust. Such self-declared intellectual superiority. So smug. So mercifully brief.
Cool, daddy-o, cool!
Posted by: Ken Tanaka | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 12:11 PM
Having access can be an important part of making interesting pictures. Sometimes relatively ordinary photographs of extraordinary things (or people) can be very interesting; if not as photographic art, still as documentation.
Ginsberg certainly had that kind of access.
I'm still wondering what happened to Robert Heinlein's photo collection. It's clear from the biography that he was a fairly serious photographer (set up his own darkroom in 1948, and such), and he was around all the other important authors of the early part of his era a fair amount. (Also photographed some of their wives nude, it sounds like, but I rather hope those shots don't surface.)
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 03:24 PM
Ken,
"Such self-declared intellectual superiority. So smug."
I'm curious as to where you saw any of these writers declare their intellectual superiority to anyone.
Posted by: David S. | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 03:59 PM
Director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) is presently filming "On the Road" which should be out in 2011. This is a film I want to see!
Sam Riley as Sal Paradise and Garret Hedlun as Dean Moriarty. More at thelink below:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337692/
Posted by: Andre Moreau | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 04:55 PM
Photography seems the bastard art form celebrities and "other" art stars gravitate to as an "easy" sideline. Today we have Lou Reed walking about with one, two, three photo books under his belt- and much as I like his music...
Posted by: Stan B. | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 06:22 PM
We see the same thing here in Australia (and I guess you do in the US too) with sports-people turning to the media after their careers.
In most cases they shouldn't.
But since this is a photography blog shall we discuss when successful photographers who are good in one or two disciplines suddenly turn to other subjects?
For example a good commercial photographer isn't necessarily good at weddings.
Posted by: David in Sydney | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 07:25 PM
I'm more into the 4th beat, Gregory Corso, known for his obnoxious antics, heroin addiction, frequent money borrowing, and at times exceptional poetry. If he ever had a camera, he would have pawned it.
Posted by: John Krumm | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 07:49 PM
God love the irreverent clowns...
Posted by: charlie | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 08:47 PM
I guess I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate that sculpture growing out of Jack Kerouac's head. Surely it was intentional.
Posted by: Bruce Stinshoff | Friday, 10 September 2010 at 10:11 PM
Breathe in - get heady - enjoy - [and there is something there to be enjoyed, certainly in Jack Kerouac's writing and the story of his life - in my opinion]
Posted by: David | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 04:58 AM
Thank you, for this blog post... i really like the photographs and the book. Must buy !
Posted by: André Weigel | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 07:16 AM
"In 1953 he bought a small Kodak Retina camera for $13 secondhand at a Bowery pawnshop"
I'll say it again: I was speechless when Kodak killed off the Retina and replaced it with an Instamatic SLR.
Who makes those decisions, and what were they thinking?
Posted by: misha | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 12:06 PM
And remember kids...in photography it is sometimes more important who is in the image rather than how perfectly it was captured....
Posted by: k4kafka | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 12:21 PM
I recently saw the show of them at the National Gallery (DC) and Ken and Paul are right - they will not knock you out due to the mastery of the medium.
I do think they show the other side of photography - a more casual way that people document their lives. The bonus that takes Ginsberg's photos above many others is due to the life he lived and the people he documented.
Hate "the Beats" all you want but most times content and context are far more important than technical mastery.
Posted by: matthew langley | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 01:42 PM
@David Dyer-Bennet:
Heinlein's photography and other archival materials appear to be accessible at:
http://heinleinarchives.net/upload/index.php
oddly, you may purchase segments of the archive in watermarked PDF form at very modest prices; one section is described as:
Various photos of unclothed naturists in family groupings at the clubs the Heinleins were members of in the 1950s
http://heinleinarchives.net/upload/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=1195
Posted by: sporobolus | Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 08:30 PM
I think many here are missing the point. The beats lived in the moment; their writing, ie their expression or art, was never supposed to be conformist, predictable or for the masses. From Wikipedia: "The members of the Beat Generation quickly developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity".
It is absolutely consistent with their refreshing and inspired approach to art that their photographs betray no adherence to the kind of formal conventions that most people would find safe and acceptable.
Posted by: Phil Wright | Sunday, 12 September 2010 at 07:46 AM
All the negativity here is puzzling to me.
I wonder this too, that's not at all my impression.
Doesn't read that way to me, any more than the trees appear to be growing out of the cars. I understand about framing subjects when the background is in focus or nearly in focus, but when it's as out of focus as that... And as Phil has pointed out, they weren't about being conventional.
Posted by: Rob | Sunday, 12 September 2010 at 01:26 PM
The reason for the dissonance here is the tawdry nature and persistence of the cult of celebrity and its evil twin sister, fame..and the impact it has on some of us.
You can add Dennis Hopper to the list of in-crowd celeb shooters with a ready-made entree to 'those the common people love to watch'. Or at least the media.
There is a reason Carl Jung eschewed attempting to make his body of work more 'accessible' to the mainstream of society.
Clive James produced a wonderful analysis/critique of fame in modern society some years ago, 'Fame in the 20th Century' - compelling viewing it was. Fame is of course almost uncorrelated with talent (think Paris Hilton). Another guy I liked from back in the celeb beat times was Marshall McLuhan, a towering and original intellect. Not too famous either!
Posted by: Philip Partridge | Sunday, 12 September 2010 at 11:55 PM