Remembering photographer Harold Chapman who passed away earlier this month at his home in Kent, UK at the age of 95. Best known for his iconic photos of the 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur, later known as the Beat Hotel, where he lived for 5 years photographing its inhabitants who included William S Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Ian Sommerville, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Peter Orlovsky and of course Allen. He was in fact the last resident to vacate in 1963 when it changed owners (it’s now 4.5 star hotel ‘Relais Hôtel du Vieux Paris’) In those days it was 1 pound sterling a day..and filled with penniless students. Photo: Peter Orlovsky & Allen Ginsberg, Pl. Saint-Germain des Prés, Paris, December 1957, by Harold Chapman (theomcgallery.com) #haroldchapman #beathotel #paris #beatgeneration #allenginsberg #peterorlovsky #williamsburroughs #gregorycorso (at Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch7_AfSP1LI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
WSB [Paris] to Allen Ginsberg [New York] Dec 2, 1959 9 Rue Git Le Coeur Paris 6, France Dear Allen, I enclose material for Big Table.. Hope is not to too late.. So much work I never catch up and all absolutely urgent.. Brion’s [Gysin] work which I enclose illustrates new cut up method which he taught me.. I have met my first Master in Brion.. “Back Seat of Dreaming” is part of my current novel.. I have writ ten most of it remaining only the task of correlating material.. It is based on recent newspaper account of four? young explorers? who died of thirst in Egypt desert.. Just who died is uncertain since one member of the party has not been found yet dead or alive and the identity of the missing person is dubious owing to advanced state of decomposed when found the bodies and the methods of identi fication used lacked all precise techniques based entirely on docu ments on person but it seems the party was given to exchange of identifications just for jolly to wearing each others under and outer garments and even to writing in each others diaries an unheard of intimacy in any modern expedition.. So if my fictionalized??? account is difficult to follow so was the action, pops.. I am sending this material to you instead of direct to [Paul] Carroll so you can dig it.. I know you are busy but I think worth while pick up on this action now and I will explain method in detail when I see you also we have other project fore.. Temporary hitch.. My Old Lady [Burroughs’ mother] read the Life article and has thrown off her shop keeper weeds and revealed her hideous rank in Matriarch Inc.: “I Queen Bee Laura of Worth Avenue.. Stay out of my territory, punk..” She has, in fact, forbidden me to set foot in Palm Beach on pain of Orpheus.. And won’t send me money to come home.. I will buzz my Greek Uncle Gid [Maurice Girodias] and make it soon as possible.. Love Bill Will send more $ when I receive Mother Money. Please send mescaline if possible. Need transport out of the area. #herberthuncke #joannekyger #carolyncassady #jankerouac #pattismith #gregorycorso #dianediprima #williamburroughs #philipwhalen #gregorycorso #herberthuncke #jackkerouac #nealcassady #luannehenderson https://www.instagram.com/p/CYrQHI0M7h7eopoH05fNMlKT_0i1r-uqOv83ts0/?utm_medium=tumblr
Arrivate anche le bellissime lettere di Pavese e i saggi femministi (e di altre attiviste degli anni '70) di Angela Davis, rarità assoluta in italiano. Correte a consultare tutto il catalogo (aggiornato ogni giorno) su: www.seunanottedinvernounlibro.it #librirari #libro #libri #libreriaonline #libreria #book #books #bookstagram #libriusati #seunanottedinvernounlibro #cesarepavese #angeladavis #gregorycorso #samuelbeckett https://www.instagram.com/p/BnogfjYnW_i/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=180mui93gk5y3
Harold Chapman was born in Deal in 1927. As a child, his father introduced him to the magic of photography. Harold was self-taught. He started his career as a jazz photographer in Soho. Meeting Vogue photographer, John Deakin, changed his life. He went to Paris and became a street photographer and was soon working for The New York Times. In 1957 he moved into the Beat Hotel – then a hotel with no name – on the Left Bank and lived there untill it closed in 1964. By chance in the flea market in Montpellier, he met a publisher, Francois Lagarde, who went on to publish The Beat Hotel in 1984.
How would you describe your photography practice?
I am a street photographer which gives me a chance to avoid getting into crowds which I do not like particularly like, but like to be working alone. The pictures that I take are the messages that I see visually in the world today and I take them to show those who look what I believe the world is becoming...
What it is you want to say with your photographs?
My photographs should make people giggle and then think twice and maybe even thrice!
How do you actually get your photographs to do that?
The photographs are a juxtaposition of various objects and situations in the streets which come together by chance.
How do you develop ideas?
I develop ideas by lying flat in bed and thinking and trying to create dreams. Unfortunately the dreams are now becoming reality so it's good to show how things used to be...
Who has influenced you the most?
From a technical point of view and also philosophical, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Do they influence your thinking and your practice?
Very much so.
What dreams and goals inspired you to succeed?
I was inspired to succeed by meeting John Deakin, the well-known fashion photographer of Vogue. However, he said he always considered himself a street photographer and advised me to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and go to markets... and photograph the hardness of an ashtray and a guy digging his chick... A few days later, I happened by chance to see an exhibition of his, under a bookshop and coffee bar in Soho, called My Paris... I had never seen such stark and bleak grainy photographs... I was soon on my way to Paris where I learned my trade on the streets...
Harold Chapman Deal Kent
The Beat Hotel
The Beat Hotel was a place of eccentrics, prostitutes and artists. It was a cheap hotel on Rue Gît-Le-coeur in the city’s Latin Quarter that has now become synonymous with creativity and a metaphor for 1960s Paris. When the Beat Hotel closed its doors in 1964, Chapman was the last guest to leave. The collection of photographs he had taken there provide an artistic and historic record of the period including Brion Gysin and William Burroughs.
Brion Gysin with the Dream Machine Paris 1960
Madame Rachou, Proprietor of the Beat Hotel, William Burroughs, Paris 1960
Harold Chapmans’ other works include portraits, landscapes, bizarre objets trouvés and, especially, distinctive enigmatic street scenes (often involving incongruous background advertising) that combine his two characteristic emotions: pervasive moody anxiety with quirky wit.
Oxford Street 1970
Booker Prize-winning British novelist, Ian McEwan says: “If Chapman were merely a chronicler in a great documentary tradition, his achievement would be impressive enough. His lustrous landscapes of the Herault valley in the Languedoc, his priceless record of the Beat Hotel, his omnivorous, year-on-year transcription of daily life and its little undercurrents, would ensure his reputation as a photographer of the first rank. But it was constructive paranoia that made him an artist.”
Harold Chapman once my mentor and tutor in Deal, Kent. Both Ricoh addicts and Lomo freaks! Still going strong.
‘Harold Chapman at 90′ Not only The Beat Hotel showing at Linden Hall Gallery, Deal, Kent. June/July 2017.
Poster from the Jack Kerouac Conference, July 23-August 1, 1982, 40 years ago this week.
The conference marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of ON THE ROAD and was nearly thirteen years after Jack passed away. #williamsburroughs #kerouacconference #naropauniversity #carlsolomon #jackkerouac #peterorlovsky #allenginsberg #beatgeneration #robertfrank #carlsolomon #ontheroad #lawrenceferlinghetti #gregorycorso #bouldercolorado #ontheroad (at Boulder, Colorado) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgcw9PdPHYk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Allen Ginsberg, Irving Rosenthal, Peter Orlovsky, Chicago, at the time of Big Table Magazine benefit reading, featuring Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso and Allen, January 1959. Irving Rosenthal passed away last weekend at the age of 91.
Irving Rosenthal along with Paul Carroll, founded the hugely consequential, but short lived Big Table Magazine after running afoul of the University of Chicago for publishing excerpts of William Burroughs' Naked Lunch in the Chicago Review Summer 58 issue. The first issue, published March 1959, edited by Rosenthal, was seized by authorities for obscenity, with the decision ultimately reversed by none other than Judge Julius Hoffman who conducted the Chicago 7 trial nearly ten years later. The benefit reading was released on Fantasy Records and is still available as Howls Raps and Roars, and Howl & Other Poems (photos courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Allen Ginsberg Estate)
Man Ray with Peter Orlovsky & Allen Ginsberg, Paris, April 1961, at the 7, rue Saint-Severin nightclub, run by risqué books publisher Maurice Girodias. Photo c. David Hamburger.
In a letter to Jack Kerouac Allen wrote: “Gregory had a huge swanky party at Girodias’ Olympia Press St. Severin Cave velvet restaurant, his book American Express out, and I gave dreary conferences to ARTS newspaper with Algerian poets, also it was springtime, just about that time Hemingway was getting sick somewhere else. We all drove out to Celine’s house but he was also sick and not at home so we stared at his lawn full of rusty bedsprings..” #olympiapress #mauricegirodias #gregorycorso #peterorlovsky #allenginsberg #corsoamericanexpress #paris #manray #jackkerouac #beatgeneration #counterculture #writers (at Paris, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWMLHFjvU_M/?utm_medium=tumblr
Bill must’ve said something funny… we were taking snapshots of each other, 206 East 7th street Manhattan, Fall 1953. He was staying with me typing final manuscript of YAGE LETTERS and QUEER, Kerouac & Gregory Corso visited often that season, I had a job as copyboy on the New York world Telegram a newspaper of that day. [photo: William S Burroughs, caption: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Allen Ginsberg Estate]
