Fred W. McDarrah was there with his camera. During their heyday in the late 1940s and '50s, the public regarded them as scruffy and unwashed, bearded and sandaled wild creatures who read kooky poems punctuated with four-letter words. But New York photographer Fred W. McDarrah, whose exhibit The Beat Generation is showing at the Book Beat Gallery in Oak Park, has a different view. Photos at the Book Beat are vintage prints of images in the book. Some of these same pictures appeared last year in the big beat exhibit mounted by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
All signs say the spirit of the beatniks is undergoing a revival.
There's no better way to explore their world than through the photographs of McDarrah, who's been photo editor of the Village Voice for 35 years. He followed his subjects to the studios, bars, bookstores, jazz joints, coffeehouses and galleries around Greenwich Village. What's amazing is that many of these pictures look as if they could have been taken recently in Chelsea, SoHo or the East Village. That means the beats were ahead of their time. Their attitudes, lifestyles, words and images have become part of our national consciousness.