Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
Date: Sunday May 2, 2010 - Sunday September 19, 2010
Location: National Gallery of Art
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In the first scholarly exhibition of American poet Allen Ginsberg's photographs, all facets of his work in photography will be explored. Some 79 works on display will range from the 1950s "drugstore" prints to his now celebrated portraits of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, snapshots of Ginsberg himself taken just before he achieved literary fame, and his later portraits of the Beats and other friends made in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ginsberg (1926–1997) started taking photographs in 1953 when he purchased a small, secondhand Kodak camera. For the next decade he captured numerous intimate shots of himself as well as his friends and lovers. He abandoned photography in 1963 but returned to it in the early 1980s. Encouraged by photographers Berenice Abbott and Robert Frank, he reprinted much of his early work and began making new portraits, adding sometimes extensive inscriptions. Although Ginsberg's photographs form a compelling portrait of the Beat and counterculture generation from the 1950s to the 1990s, his pictures are far more than mere historical documents. The same ideas that inform his poetry—an intense observation of the world, a deep appreciation of the beauty of the vernacular, a celebration of the sacredness of the present, and a faith in intuitive expression—also permeate his photography.
Passes are not required for this exhibition. The exhibition is on view in the National Gallery's West Building, Ground Floor.