Beats, The

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In the late 50s after an unsuccessful stint in college, Larry Fink dropped out andand#160;began an odyssey of hitchhiking through America. Starting out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,and#160;and moving on to Chicago, Larry travelled eastward through Cincinnati and finallyand#160;back to his native soil on Long Island where his family waited with dismayed but openand#160;arms. Clearly Long Island was not an optimal place for young Fink to remain. Striking outand#160;on his own once again, but this time for nearby Beat mecca, New York City, Finkand#160;settled down on Minetta Lane with a chap who fancied himself a poet. Larry was quick to hit McDougal Street where he met Turk, Mary, Bobbie, Motha,and#160;Ambrose, Randy, and Mike Stanley not to mention Hugh Romney (aka Wavy Gravy)and#160;and LeRoi Jones and so many more... Photographing, singing, and smoking weedand#160;scored in small brown paper bags on the avenues of the Village, Fink was living withand#160;internal rage, infernal optimism, and oh so many new freedoms. Just a kid, Larryand#160;yearned to get out and fight the revolution and to photograph while doing so. The crew lived all together in the sub basement of the Sullivan Street Theatre.and#160;Being next to the Village Gate, a now legendary jazz club, they dug their way to theand#160;rear of the club brick by brick to listen to their princes of expressive freedom:and#160;Coltrane, Mingus, and Art Blakey. Larry Fink, a Marxist and red diaper baby, didnand#39;t immediately fit in with Turkand#39;s crew,and#160;but they needed a young, drug-fueled, jazz-loving (and playing) photographer toand#160;document their visionary plight. So, it was decided that Fink sign on they soon leftand#160;New York to cross America for Mexico in search of the soul of the Aztecs, theand#160;freedoms of the road, the compulsion of speed, the needy thrust of exaggeratedand#160;adolescence. They moved fast and hysterically forward...andquot;It was my fate to be aligned with the Beats because of my propensity for drugs, anger,and#160;and poetry. Since they were second generation, without the same sense of immortaland#160;obsession such as the like of Kerouac and Ginsberg, they had a distinct need to beand#160;documented. Perhaps that is why they tolerated me. We were not a happy marriageand#160;and got our divorce in Mexico City. The pictures, made in 1958 and 1959, come fromand#160;MacDougal Street in New York City all the way down to Mexico, and on the road inand#160;America.andquot; Larry Fink