Allen Ginsberg behind the lens

Though Allen Ginsberg earned fame from his poetry, he didn’t make much money. In the 80’s, when a financially-strapped Ginsberg rediscovered a plethora of photographs he’d taken of his beat poet friends (many of whom were also lovers), he put the pictures to work for him. The aging poet presented lectures on “Snapshot Poetics” and worked to sell the reproduction rights for his photos. Though Ginsberg admitted his photos wouldn’t be valued were he not already established as an artist, the aesthetic quality is not the point: the photos provide a telling glimpse into a life, a movement, a moment in time. “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" is currently on display at the National Gallery of Art through September 6, and Edmund White has taken a look for the New York Review of Books blog:

The pictures are fascinating since few of them are well known and they often show their subjects in their youth—a fresh-faced, toothy, nerdy Ginsberg, for instance, long before he became the bearded guru, and a melancholy, poetic William Burroughs before he became the saurian undertaker seen in his familiar portraits. There’s even a shadowy nude of Burroughs in bed during the period when he and Ginsberg were lovers.

Almost all of the Beats were bisexual and one another’s lovers. Neal Cassady, the heartthrob of the bunch, slept with everyone, male or female, though he preferred women and was never faithful to anyone. He let Ginsberg sleep with him but mainly as a favor and partly as an experiment; soon after their first New York idyll Cassady left a lovesick Ginsberg behind and ran off to Denver and to adventures with numerous women. Ginsberg joined him there but was ignored most of the time . . .