“Nobody Goes Home Sad” – Photographs of the “Six Gallery” Poets 1956-2000 – Back in 2014, we reported on a show, a, frankly, groundbreaking show, at the Utah State University’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. featuring recently-discovered images from San Francisco (Berkeley), taken in 1956, the very earliest days of the Beat Generation, by photographer Walter Lehrman, alongside more contemporary images of the poets taken by the ever-resourceful, John Suiter
Lehrman’s negatives languished in his attic until the 1990s. Between 2009 and 2014, Suiter worked on digitally restoring the photos.
In “From Attic to Archive” – he writes in detail about them, their discovery and their preservation”:
This past October (2015), on the 60th anniversary of the 6 Gallery reading, the Merrill-Cazier Library announced the opening of the Walter Lehrman Beat Generation Photography Collection, providing an archival home for this small but significant trove of portraits and performance shots of the Beats. “It feels great that people will be able to use pictures of mine for their research. I really never expected to see a dollar, or even an exhibit of those pictures, let alone a university collection,” said Lehrman. “I just shot them for the sheer pleasure of hanging out with those guys.”
Now a decade and more on, Suiter’s presentation for the most recent issue of The Journal Of Beat Studies, a special issue honoring Allen, is – “A Centenary Portfolio” – We focus specifically on Lehrman’s photos of Allen:
“This photo is from the first roll of film that Walter shot of Allen in late October or early November 1955. Allen had recently moved from San Francisco into his “Strange New Cottage” on Milvia Street in North Berkeley. Walter lived with his wife Jinny, on Hillegass Avenue, a few blocks south of campus. Walter invited Ginsberg to sit for a portrait, which Allen did, literally, arranging himself on a chair by the window, in a straight-on profile, with a pack of cigarettes standing on the window sill.
“In this triptych of close-ups, again, shot in Lehrman’s apartment in the weeks immediately following the 6 Gallery, we can see the creative rapport developing between Walter and Allen. This is the same Ginsberg who Kerouac portrayed in The Dharma Bums as “Allah Goldbook”, the “hornrimmed intellectual hepcat”. Although Allen loved The Dharma Bums and praised it highly, he didn’t particularly like “his” character in the book. “I’d rather be writ in tragical detail than kist in passing as giddy kid”, he told Jack.”
“This was Walter’s first attempt at photographing Ginsberg in a public setting. The venue was the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association on Chestnut Street, an annex of the San Francisco Poetry Center, where readings were given twice a month. Seated against the wall in the background are Ida Holes (left) of the Poetry Center and the Scots poet Helen Adam (right). Philip Whalen is in the right foreground (with cigarette).”
“Ginsberg read sections of “Howl” at this event (the poem was still a work in progress), but it is said that he toned down his delivery, censoring himself at some points in deference to Ruth Witt-Diamant, the director of the Poetry Center, who was in the audience.
After making an 8 x 10 print of this image in his darkroom, Walter gave it to Allen who wrote on the back: “A small school-sponsored affair, not one of our wilder nights”
While the reading may not have been one of Allen’s “wilder nights”, Walter did manage to capture what would become an iconic Ginsberg flourish – the raised arm and prophesying hand, proclaiming, “Visions!, omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!”
more to follow