Eighth Street, looking east from Sixth Avenue, January 1, 1950. © Fred W. McDarrah, courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery.
Reading copy of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” on the couch at Fred W. McDarrah’s apartment, 304 West 14th Street, New York City, February 14, 1959© Fred W. McDarrah, courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery
For half a century, Fred W. McDarrah (1926-2007) was Greenwich Village’s poet-photographer laureate, penning subversive verse in black and white silver gelatin prints. As the sole staff photographer for The Village Voice for decades, and its first photo editor McDarrah centred himself at the heart of the New York’s downtown scene when it was a bohemian paradise filled with artists, activists, musicians, writers, and performers.
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McDarrah’s chronicle of life recalls when the Village was just that: a community of iconoclasts ready to take on the world. In light of the closing of The Village Voice earlier this month, the comprehensive new survey exhibition Fred McDarrah: New York Scenes at Steven Kasher and catalogue from Abrams provides a timely, well-considered compendium of McDarrah’s impressive oeuvre.
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McDarrah’s New York is a comet casting through space, a fiery mass of humanity in the final decades of the second millennia. Whether documenting Carolee Scheneemann’s first performance of Interior Scroll or shooting firefighters rushing into a townhouse after the Weathermen accidentally set off a bomb, McDarrah was on the scene with camera in hand, ready to capture it all. Here, his son Tim McDarrah takes us on a magical trip back in time.
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Artist Faith Ringgold poses with her work, August 30, 1978. © Fred W. McDarrah, courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery