Fred McDarrah
Michael Carlson
Wednesday November 21, 2007
Guardian
The American photographer Fred McDarrah, who has died aged
81, helped to create the image of Greenwich Village at its
counter-cultural peak, that era which mixed the New York
School of Art, the Beat movement and the coffee-house folk
revival - and captivated the world until rock music and
revolution switched attentions elsewhere.
His most memorable images define the era: Bob Dylan in
Sheridan Square giving a military salute, Jack Kerouac at a
reading, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross; Ed
Sanders in front of the Peace Eye bookstore, artists Franz
Kline at the Cedar Tavern or Jasper Johns in his studio. Yet
for McDarrah this was all part of the job: he was the staff
photographer for the weekly Village Voice, and this was his
neighbourhood coverage.
Although his ****traits are shown in galleries, McDarrah was
a photo-journalist in the best tradition of the New York
tabloids. "If someone called me a fine-art photographer, I'd
laugh them out of the room," he told an interviewer in 1999.
Covering his beat south of 14th Street, he do***ented the
1969 Stonewall battles between gay men and the New York
police, and the rubble of a house on West 12th street whose
basement was the bomb factory of the Weather Underground,
who briefly attempted to wage guerrilla warfare in the US.
He covered Robert Kennedy in the Lower East Side slums, and
anti-war protesters in Wa****ngton Square.
But McDarrah was never a typical village-ite. In fact, soon
after joining the Voice, he began brokering beatniks. He
placed an ad in the classifieds section: Rent a Beatnik.
From $15 for half an hour of poetry reading, "tuxedo park
parties" could hire "rare genuine beatniks, badly groomed
but brilliant ... completely equipped: beard, eye shades,
old army jacket, Levis, frayed ****rts, sneakers or sandals
(optional). Lady beatniks also available, usual garb: all
black." Taking a small commission, he provided much-needed
money to many of the people he was covering.
McDarrah was born in Brooklyn, and as a 12-year-old bought
his first camera on impulse for 39 cents to take pictures of
the 1939 New York World's Fair. After serving as a
paratrooper during the second world war, he remained in
Japan to photograph the occupation. Thanks to the GI Bill,
he took a journalism degree at New York University, though
when he joined the Voice in 1959 it was as an advertising
salesman. He soon became the paper's only staff
photographer, and as the Voice grew he headed the
department, helping a number of photographers, among them
James Hamilton and Sylvia Platchy, to successful careers.
McDarrah's journalistic training meant he understood what
re****ters were looking for to illustrate their stories, and
Voice re****ters loved him. Among his most frequent targets
was the infamous New York fixer Roy Cohn, whose essence
McDarrah captured in situations as different as his birthday
party at Studio 54, or giving instructions to a young Donald
Trump, another Voice bete noire. "He never missed a fat cat
with a fork or knife in their hand," recalled Voice writer
Wayne Barrett.
His 1960 book, The Beat Scene, remains the outstanding
visual chronicle of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso
and their time. His pictures capture the feel of performers
from the audience's point of view - the atmosphere of smoky
coffee houses and bars - while also providing candid
****traits. New York, New York (1964) covered the whole city,
while by the time he produced Beat Generation: Glory Days in
Greenwich Village (1966) with his wife Gloria, he was
already looking back at the end of the era, a signal
confirmed by his next book, The New Bohemia (1967). He used
a 1972 Guggenheim grant to travel across the US,
photographing America outdoors, and developing pictures in a
tent in the manner of his Village predecessors Joseph
Steiglitz or Georgia O'Keeffe.
Over the years, Greenwich Village became a gentrified
neighbourhood of expensive apartments, and the Voice turned
into an advertising-laden free-sheet. But McDarrah remained
on the masthead, as consulting photo editor, until his
death. His later books were mostly retrospective, with
titles like Anarchy, Protest and Rebellion and the
Counterculture That Changed America (2003), Kerouac and
Friends: a Beat Generation Album (2002), and Beat
Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village (1996). He died
in his sleep in his Greenwich Village house, the day after
celebrating his 81st birthday and his 47th wedding
anniversary. He is survived by Gloria and two sons.
· Frederick William McDarrah, photographer, born November 5
1926; died November 6 2007
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Steve Hayes
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