Provenance
Allen Ginsberg Estate; Ellen and Gary Davis, Greenwich, CT (through Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York); gift to NGA, 2008.
Poet John Giorno & Bill's secretary Jim Grauerholz aghast at William Burroughs' whip-fast flexible blackjack draw from the hip. Bowery muggers and street junkies try to steal his wallet, watch out! Age 71 Burroughs returned from Lawrence, Kansas to his old "Bunker" loft (formerly a gym locker-room) with _Place of Dead Roads_ mss. Scar on Giorno's belly (March 26, 1985) from cancer operation ten years earlier, he'd set up black cloth'd wall with stage-lights for his Buddhist rock & roll poetry rehearsals. A bunch of Queers me too.
1985
Accession Number
2008.131.12
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 32 x 32 cm (12 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.) | sheet: 49 x 40.5 cm (19 5/16 x 15 15/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Credit Line
Gift of Gary S. Davis
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Herbert E. Huncke, author _The Evening Sun Turned Crimson_, who introduced "hip" vocabulary & attitudes to writers later labeled "Beat", his room Hotel Elite, N.E. corner 8th Avenue and 51'st street diagonally opposite Madison Square Garden. Rare glimpse of Huncke, then hustling bread on Times Square, strung-out - he fixed at the sink. Saw him infrequently that season, though we'd known each other well since 1945, found his room to say good bye, leaving New York to hitch south, Mexico and Bay area, here just before Christmas, Manhattan 1953.
Ginsberg, Allen