Harry Smith exhausted 3 A.M. over Chinese take-out supper. Car had backed into him up on 12th Street corner Avenue A weeks earlier, compression-fractured his knee, so he stayed with me nine months in small room behind him he’d fixed with door-latch and lock. Old postcard of Manhattan Island on toilet door panel to his right. Ethnomusicologic archivist, film-maker, alchemist, he’d designed my new _Collected Poems_ book cover, he’d been moved out of hotel room on 28’th Street, lived in Bowery shelters, was now homeless in New York! June 17, 1985.
1985
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 40.4 x 27.4 cm (15 7/8 x 10 13/16 in.) sheet: 50.8 x 40.2 cm (20 x 15 13/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Gary S. Davis
Accession Number
2009.103.20
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...