Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926-) & Gregory Corso (b. 1930-), modest & immodest self-portraits, we weren't lovers but poets & jackanapes smiling and serious in turn, candid facing Kodak-Retina lens delayed-action snap, camera propped on chair other end of small white-washed room top-floor little Hotel Armor a block downhill Calle Cook from 1 Rue Magellan Burroughs' Villa Muneria, Tangier, Morocco August 1961
1961, printed 1995
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
left panel: 26.19 × 20.8 cm (10 5/16 × 8 3/16 in.) right panel: 26.19 × 20.64 cm (10 5/16 × 8 1/8 in.) sheet: 40.48 × 50.48 cm (15 15/16 × 19 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Gary S. Davis
Accession Number
2010.137.32
Art Historical Context
This double portrait captures Beat Generation icons Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso during a 1961 stay in Tangier, Morocco. Taken with a Kodak Retina camera propped on a chair using its delayed-action timer, the gelatin silver print presents two candid views of the poets in a modest top-floor hotel room. The long descriptive title, written by Ginsberg himself, emphasizes their identity as “poets & jackanapes” rather than romantic partners, while recording the precise setting near William Burroughs’s villa. The image reflects the spontaneous, documentary spirit of Beat culture, where writers ...
About the Artist
Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), born in Newark, New Jersey, emerged as a multifaceted figure in American culture, best known as a Beat Generation poet but also a prolific visual artist whose photographs, drawings, and prints captured the raw energy of his era. His early life offers little documentation on artistic training, though he attended Columbia University in the 1940s, where he formed connectio...