SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Although the late poet Allen Ginsberg is best known for his signature poem Howl, one of the literary classics from the Beat Generation of the 1950s, he also was a prolific photographer. On view from August 4 – October 14, 2007 and as part of San Antonio ’s annual citywide FotoSeptiembre celebration, the San Antonio Museum of Art is pleased to present Allen Ginsberg: Beat Generation Photographer, a distinguished collection of the poet’s photographs. The exhibition was organized by the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley from the David and Christine Sestak Family Collection and is made possible in San Antonio by the Helen and Everett H. Jones Exhibition Fund.

Allen Ginsberg: Beat Generation Photographer includes forty-seven of Ginsberg’s photographs from both his early and late periods as a photographer. Subjects in the photos include counterculture luminaries Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (the owner of San Francisco ’s famous City Lights Bookshop), Beat poet Gregory Corso, Robert Frank, Timothy Leary, and the painter Francesco Clemente, among others. As Ginsberg was a writer, he anecdotally inscribed the names of his subjects below each picture. The exhibition also contains a number of books and cultural documentation relating to Ginsberg and his circle.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the following programs will take place at SAMA:

September 11, 2007, 6:30 pm - A Dramatic Reading of Howl, presented by Gemini Ink
September 18, 2007, 6:30 pm - Poetry Slam, presented by the 2007 San Antonio Slam Team
September 25, 2007, 6:30 pm - California Beat: West Coat Art from the Beat Era, a lecture by David S. Rubin, The Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art.

Full caption for Jack Kerouac image: Jack Kerouac, railroad brakeman’s rule-book in pocket, couch pillows airing on fire-escape three flights up overlooking backyard clothes-lines South. He’d already published The Town and The City, completed half-dozen unprinted classic volumes including On The Road, Visions of Cody, Doctor Sax, early Blues books, & had begun The Subterraneans adventures love affair with “Mardow Fox”, Aileen Lee. Aileen typed for W. S. Burroughs then in residence editing Yage Letters and unpublishable Queer manuscripts; I scribed “The Green Automobile,” Gregory Corso visited that season, 206 East 7th Street near Tompkins Park Lower East Side Manhattan probably September 1953. 1953/1990s. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches.