Lafcadio & Peter Orlovsky at kitchen table, Peter's apartment 5 Turner Terrace, a veteran's housing Project near a gigantic gas tank on Potrero Hill. 23 year old Peter brought Lafcadio, age 15, to Bay Area to stay with us, relieve his mother Kate in Northport, L.I., where Lafcadio knew Kerouac, and had visions of becoming a millionaire (and building a private space-ship to get off Nuked Planet Earth to another world) by answering dozens & dozens of get-rich-quick home-sales ads ("Earn $800.00 a day selling special Fish-bait oil by Telephone!") in pulp magazines' back pages. next Laf quit Jr. High School to bicycle downtown S.F. for dishwashing job--"One of the best periods of his life, getting his first whiff of work, money, independence, he was sparking up, got three social security cards, the F.B.I. came round to investigate" . . .
1956, printed 1995
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 25.1 x 38.5 cm (9 7/8 x 15 3/16 in.) sheet: 40.5 x 50.5 cm (15 15/16 x 19 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Gary S. Davis
Accession Number
2011.146.36
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...