Beat poet Allen Ginsberg often carried a camera with him so that he could memorialize his friendships in a photographic diary. From 1953-63, he spontaneously recorded times spent with an intimate entourage that included literary figures Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky, who was also Ginsberg’s protégé and lover. Due to losing his camera, he abandoned photography for twenty years but took it up again in 1983 after discovering old negatives. Encouraged by the renowned photographers Berenice Abbott and Robert Frank, he bought a new camera and resumed the practice, which continued until his death in 1997. In the later works, he documented encounters with older versions of his soul mates from the 1950s, as well as with a new generation of writers, poets, visual artists, and entertainers—many of whom were active in New York’s East Village scene of the 1980s. Luminaries from that era who can be spotted among the salon-style groupings on view include Laurie Anderson, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Byrne, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, Madonna, Kenny Scharf, Patti Smith and Ai Weiwei.

Ginsberg once commented that he considered his photographs to be “sacramental,” a concept that seems very much in line with the outlook of someone who wrote, “Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!” While the overall exhibition “Muses & Self” is a mash-up that includes text labels with poems written by Ginsberg’s photos using AI, there are a number of works that reveal his belief in the sanctity of friendships and in the presence of divinity in everyday life. In early photographs of Kerouac and Burroughs, the subjects stand on the fire escape of Ginsberg’s apartment while taking a drag off a cigarette—an act which from a Beat perspective could be considered a spiritual ritual in the same way as drinking wine is in Judaism. In the image, light gently sheaths Burroughs’ face as he stares into space, savoring the serenity of the moment. A similar sense of something ceremonial is observable in a 1994 photo of artists David Hockney and Larry Rivers attending the funeral of Henry Geldzahler, a legendary curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who supported their careers but was also their friend. As the two stand adjacent to one another, their gazes are inward and their expressions contemplative. Illuminated by streaks of sunlight, they appear frozen in an epiphanous moment, with Hockney holding a glass of wine.

Allen Ginsberg, David Hockney and Larry Rivers at Henry Geldzahler’s Funeral, August 18, 1994. © Allen Ginsberg. Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery.

Of all the subjects that Ginsberg photographed, he appears most adventurous in his self-portraits, shot alone and with others. In the early 1960s, in fact, he pointed his camera at a mirror—the way we do today with our phones—as seen in two “selfies” with Orlovsky. In a 1961 example that brings to mind the photos of Diane Arbus, the younger poet looks like a giant compared to Ginsberg with his camera, reflected in a mirror. The composition is provocative and spatially ambiguous.  By contrast, Ginsberg is the primary focal point in a photo from the following year, taken in a Calcutta hotel room. Having positioned himself in the center of the picture, he stares straight ahead, with Orlovsky off to one side, as both bear witness to their sacred bond.

Ginsberg also was not shy about photographing himself in the nude, which isn’t surprising in that he was a Gay Liberation activist who participated in the late 1960s “love-ins”. In 1961, he celebrated his platonic love for Corso in a photo of the two of them posing like naked fraternal twins, each with his hands playfully covering his own genitals. He also photographed himself naked before a hotel room mirror in 1987, showing from the pubic region upward. Like his contemporary John Coplans, who also photo-documented the effects of aging on his body, Ginsberg accepted the inevitable changes to his physical appearance as a beautiful, natural manifestation of life.