Bob Rosenthal Interview (On Photography) – 2

August 28, 2018Simon Pettet

John Shoesmith’s interview with Bob Rosenthal continues

JS: Would the captions change much then, the more he was captioning? Especially some of the iconic ones which he must have captioned dozens of times.

BR: Sometimes the difference would be the change of an adjective, a tweaking, but sometimes something will come up and it gets longer and longer. They all build on each other. Writing about it is the memory of the sacred. This is what the prints represent. But those silver gelatin prints, they have an eternal etching to them, and the way the eyes look, the communication is … Read More

Bob Rosenthal Interview (On Photography) – 1

August 27, 2018Simon Pettet

[Bob Rosenthal and Allen Ginsberg – Photo: Brian Graham]

Continuing and concluding our series of interviews regarding Allen-the-photographer

John Shoesmith interviews Bob Rosenthal

Bob Rosenthal first met Allen Ginsberg in the mid-1970s, when he and his wife helped the poet secure an apartment in the New York City building where they were then living. He started doing some part-time work for Ginsberg in 1977, eventually becoming his fulltime secretary in 1979, a job in which he remained until Ginsberg’s death in 1997. Often referred to as Ginsberg’s “right-hand man,” his main role was to handle the increasing amount of administrative … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 380

August 24, 2018Simon Pettet

[Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti – outside of City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 1956 – photo: Peter Orlovsky]

The esteemed Poetry Foundation has been working (consistently) on its web presence. It’s just recently consolidated and organized this useful resource – An Introduction to the Beat Poets.

While we’re on such overviews, here is the page on the Beats from the Academy of American Poets 

International Beats – Marc Olmsted in Empty Mirror reviews Erik Mortenson’s  Translating the Counterculture – The Reception of the Beats in Turkey Southern Illinois University Press are also the publishers … Read More

Jacqueline Gens Interview

August 20, 2018Simon Pettet

[Jacqueline Gens – Photo: Allen Ginsberg]

Long before she began working with Allen Ginsberg in the 1980s, Jacqueline Gens was inspired by the Beat writers. Discovering their work when she was in her teens, she points to Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish” as one that “just rocked my world.” A poet in her own right – she was a director and a founder of the Master of Fine Arts Programme in Poetry at New England College, and for many years worked at the Naropa Institute (now University) in Boulder, Colorado, where she first met Ginsberg – Gens played a crucial … Read More

Sid Kaplan Interview – part 2

August 14, 2018Simon Pettet

[Sid Kaplan – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

John Shoesmith interview with Sid Kaplan on his work as printer of Allen Ginsberg’s photography continues 

 

JS: I’m sure that famous Kerouac photo on the fire escape was one you probably could have done in your sleep, seeing as you probably printed it dozens of times.

SK: That was very tricky print to do. It was very underdeveloped, and at the time, I didn’t have the magic fluid handy. What happened with the Kerouac thing, we had it printed on a very hard grade of paper. The difference between the face and … Read More

Brian Graham Interview – part 2

August 7, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in his kitchen, New York City, 1988 – photo: Brian Graham]

Brian Graham on Allen Ginsberg’s photography – continues

JS: I’m interested in Allen and his photographic “eye” – did he know what he was looking for when he was looking at a contact sheet and what he’d want printed?

BG: Robert had a lot of influence over Allen (when it came to deciding what photos to print). But Allen took the pictures, so he knew what he was after. And there are a lot of good ones.He had a quirky kind of sensibility. Like the picture of … Read More

Brian Graham on The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg

August 6, 2018Simon Pettet

[Brian Graham – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

Brian Graham‘s journey from his birthplace of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia to New York City bgan in the early 1980’s when he met the famed photographer Robert Frank, who for many years has spent his summers in the Maritimes. Sensing that Graham was curious about photography, Frank invited him to New York City. While he began with carpentry work at Frank’s Bleecker Street apartment, it eventually led to helping Frank in the darkroom. “I learned how to print with Robert in the darkroom, which was really something.” Graham eventually established his … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 377

August 3, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg Beacon Theater, New York, 1995 – photo: Michael Stipe]

Focusing this week on Allen Ginsberg-as-photographer, with a series of interviews. Our two-part interview with Raymond Foye here and here (which should on no account be missed) will be followed, next week, (Monday), with an interview with Allen’s sometime printer, Brian Graham.

And , yes, that’s right, that’s the Michael Stipe responsible for the image above.

Here’s another Ginsberg-with-camera photo we dig (from 1992).  The photographer is Bruce Weber

Here’s yet another Ginsberg-with-camera photo  (photographer, this time, Lynn Goldsmith)

 

Kerouac painting – Following on from the successful … Read More

Raymond Foye on Allen Ginsberg’s Photography – part 2

July 31, 2018Simon Pettet

Raymond Foye on Allen Ginsberg’s photography – continued from yesterday

JS: Robert Frank was obviously an important influence for Allen.

RF: For most people I knew, Allen was a real hero, but Allen had his own heroes, and Robert was certainly one of them. Allen worshipped Robert. So the photography was a way for him to bond with Robert, and to be his student. He had another friend who was a photographer, who lived above Strand Books (in New York), Hank O”Neal. He was the commercial agent for Berenice Abbott. He was another person whom Allen relied on for … Read More

Raymond Foye on Allen Ginsberg’s Photography

July 30, 2018Simon Pettet

[Raymond Foye – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

John Shoesmith interviews Raymond Foye on Allen Ginsberg’s photography

JS: You knew Allen before you started working with the photographs. How did your role with the photos begin?

RF: I met Allen in 1973 when I was sixteen, and a junior at Lowell High School. I went with the senior English honors class to a Kerouac symposium held at Salem State College, in Massachusetts. My English teacher, a lovely woman named Rita Sullivan, allowed me to go with the senior class, even though I was a junior, because she knew I was reading … Read More