Bill must've said something funny from the floor, we were taking snapshots of each other on same couch, my $13.00 Kodak Retina pawn-shop camera in Burroughs' hands. He stayed in the apartment East 7th Street between Avenues B & C most of that Fall 1953.
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Subject ID142208
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Depiction IDaefd4e84-8a34-481a-ab00-197692d08e2b
Subject ID142208
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Created2026-05-22
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleBill must've said something funny from the floor, we were taking snapshots of each other on same couch, my $13.00 Kodak Retina pawn-shop camera in Burroughs' hands. He stayed in the apartment East 7th Street between Avenues B & C most of that Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142208
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Subject ID205227
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleLouis Marker, Jacksonville Florida. Bill Burroughs friend from Mexico City. I visited December 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/205227
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleBill Reck in his coldwater flat Lower East Side circa 1953, one of eminent Subterraneans (Vide Frity Nichols); he entered J.K.'s Book of Dreams as Dick Beck. outside his window off Bowery and East 2'd Street, a cemetery, he wrote "Love is a lime green tree," last line of poem looking out
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/157025
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleBill Burroughs, more friendly + open than I realized at the time - 1953 - really pleased!
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/163963
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_title“Peter lying dressed up in pants on mattress picking his red moustache, with long hollywood Christlike hair & Christ’s small beard stubble — ” (_Indian Journals_, p. 132) Orlovsky & I spent half year in this room overlooking Dasasumedh Ghat’s bathers pilgrims & beggars a few steps from the Ganges, french window slats overlooking food market one side, pilgrim alley the other. We cooked on small gas camper stove, kept records, wrote letters, visited temples, burning ghats, read Ramayana, mixed with poets & sanskrit Achkans in small restaurant chai houses, visited shenai master Bichmulla Khan, Peter took singing lessons from one Rabmdranath Pal, & we sought out swamis & holy men to talk with. Benares, December 19, 1962.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143977
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Depiction IDd412b8e6-b8e2-4f9a-80eb-34c9d9c75b6b
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleCarl Solomon in his Prince Street apartment several years after we were locked up together in residence on Sixth Floor ward, New York State Psychiatric Institute. He got shock treatments, introduced me to Jean Genet’s _Miracle of the Rose_ and Antonin Artaud’s _Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society_ translations, I stayed eight months, weekends off. Afterwards, working mid-town at his uncle’s Ace Books publications, he gave Kerouac small advance on first _On the Road_ sketches (scroll later rejected), saw Jaime DeAngulo’s classic _Indian Tales_ first hard-back through press, & edited William Burroughs’ _Junkie_ paperback first edition. New York, 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142169
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Providernga
Depiction ID2065665f-acdd-42c1-a036-92a735e7fb66
Subject ID143963
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleWilliam S. Burroughs looking serious, sad lover’s eyes, afternoon light in window, cover of just-published _Junkie_ propped in shadow above right shoulder, Japanese kite against Lower East Side hot water flat’s old wallpaper. He’d come up from South America & Mexico to stay with me editing Yage Letters and Queer manuscripts. New York Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143963
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Providernga
Depiction IDee21f2c6-5f56-4d34-b25f-a55a0a2a9c9f
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleDmitri Prigoff and Bella Akhmadulina in her husband Boris Mesuref's studio, Vorovsky Street Moscow -- I found their apartment, she introduced me to Prigoff as outstanding avant-guard experimental Poet- late November 1985. Two years later I read Prigoff's English Translations for him at an art gallery in Manhattan.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/205247
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Providernga
Depiction ID39b62d10-7f3a-4e1c-8946-5dd94a3b610d
Subject ID143969
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_title“Now Jack as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your ‘Memère’ you’ll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you’re an old man and can’t escape…” William Seward Burroughs camping as an André Gideian sophisticate lecturing the earnest Thomas Wolfean All-American youth Jack Kerouac who listens soberly dead-pan to “the most intelligent man in America” for a funny second’s charade in my living room 206 East 7th Street Apt 16, Manhattan, one evening Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143969
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Providernga
Depiction ID1229fb5c-bf34-4c19-b591-0d2a1bf55892
Subject ID142168
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleWilliam S. Burroughs interviewed for _Heavy Petting_ film memoir of youthful erotic initiations, his secretary James Grauerholz leaning forward observing discussion of sex world 1930 – 40s, final movie version cut out Bill’s queer loves. Obie Benz’s Soho loft, New York, December 21, 1986.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142168
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Providernga
Depiction ID9a464758-6214-4fd1-8232-18588999441d
Subject ID144261
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleOld-timer & survivor Herbert E. Huncke, Beat literary pioneer who introduced Burroughs, Kerouac & myself to floating population hustling & drug scene Times Square 1945. From ’48 on he penned several remarkable volumes especially the classic _The Evening Sun Turned Crimson_, autobiographic anecdotal tales (Cherry Valley, 1970). Here age 78 in basement apartment backyard East 7th Street near Avenue C, Lower East Side New York. — May 18, 1993.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144261
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleNeal Cassady & I went upstairs to attic at Millbrook estate near Poughkeepsie, big house where Tim Leary’s Castalia Foundation was then experimenting with psychedelic DMT, a half hour trip. Here Neal rests with eyes closed watched over by Susan Metzner in charge of holding the vial of clear liquid, just injected. I’d driven up from N.Y. with Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in their bus, Fall 1964.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143978
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Depiction ID68963832-1b00-4e38-a3d4-2e59bc01677c
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleLou Reed, poet-musician (hero to avant-guard Czechoslovak intellectual rock-band dissident "Plastic People of the Universe" defended from government persecution by playwright Vaclav Havel and his Charter 77 friends) at make-up table in green room, public Theater Lafayette Street New York, invited by impresario Rose Lesniak (above) to Master Ceremonies, Premiere of Poetry- Music Video Clips by Anne Waldman ("uh! oh! plutonium") and myself ("Father Death Blues"), September 1984.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/213308
typeimage
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Providernga
Depiction IDd451ba87-66fc-4a6e-9b23-210289560285
Subject ID142147
Attributes
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleHerbert E. Huncke, author _The Evening Sun Turned Crimson_, who introduced "hip" vocabulary & attitudes to writers later labeled "Beat", his room Hotel Elite, N.E. corner 8th Avenue and 51'st street diagonally opposite Madison Square Garden. Rare glimpse of Huncke, then hustling bread on Times Square, strung-out - he fixed at the sink. Saw him infrequently that season, though we'd known each other well since 1945, found his room to say good bye, leaving New York to hitch south, Mexico and Bay area, here just before Christmas, Manhattan 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/142147
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Depiction IDd3284509-09b5-4752-873b-90988dd271b3
Subject ID163962
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleRene Ricard, outrageous faggot art critic, author _God with Revolver_ poems, visiting my apartment from his across the hall, same building E. 12 Street (his windows opposite my kitchen window here across courtyard). Two years later fire drove him out on the street hallucinating murder basements. July 29, 1986.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/163962
typeimage
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Providernga
Depiction IDec05375d-18d0-4a36-bec7-8de2445a12e7
Subject ID157036
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleKodak-Retina snapshot by William Burroughs, living room 1953 Lower East Side, Jackson Mac Low portrait with recorder by Iris Brodey on wall. We were working on Bills S.A. letters. I had job on N.Y. World Telegram.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/157036
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Depiction IDcaf37b80-69e8-49ad-9157-9ca35a230688
Subject ID143973
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleHenry Schlactner, Kerouac’s friend Al Sublette by Peter Orlovsky. Foster’s Cafeteria S.F. 1955. Me on right.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/143973
typeimage
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Depiction ID7cab1e42-1268-4759-8f67-87d5a8d2264a
Subject ID144245
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleFrancesco Clemente looking over hand-script album with new poem I’d written out for his Blake-inspired watercolor illuminations, we’d done two books before; entrance corner of his loft overlooking Great Jones Street Manhattan, October 1984. He liked this picture.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144245
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Depiction ID38f63b6c-08e6-4f51-b37c-3fa1fead28cd
Subject ID154195
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleJack Kerouac looking out window Apartment 16, 206 East 7th Street Lower East Side Manhattan, view from fire-escape, books on the sill, broom handle and old tenement wallpaper in afternoon sun, WM. Burroughs was staying at my place then, Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/154195
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Depiction IDd078962f-0898-44c2-ba80-f350de6d3216
Subject ID163981
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary Davis
subject_titleWilliam S. Burroughs fixing typescript of _Yage Letters_ at kitchen table 206 East 7th Street New York Fall 1953.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/163981
typeimage
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Depiction ID60ed5822-0136-4ba7-8836-38a07057552b
Subject ID144250
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provider_nameNational Gallery of Art
provider_urlhttps://www.nga.gov/
subject_creditlineGift of Gary S. Davis
subject_titleLucien Carr, my oldest friend from college days, had introduced me to Jack Kerouac after they’d met at the West End bar on 113th St. & Broadway, and connected Jack + me to his fellow St. Louis uppermiddle-class (aristocrat we thought) confrère William S. Burroughs, late winter 1944. We lived down the hall from each other on 7th floor Union Theological Seminary, Columbia freshman dorm during W.W.II, I heard haunting Brahms sextet music through his door, knocked, we met. Kerouac heard _Old Angel Midnight_ eloquence in Lucien’s laconic “Celtic” intonations. Here four decades later, wise Old Dog Bureau Manager United Press International he was visiting former house-mate Alene Lee’s Soho loft. More eyes perused his wire-service prose than all Jack’s & my texts, I’ll bet. December 2, 1986.
subject_urlhttps://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/144250
typeimage