Harry Redl : Portraits of the Beat Generation
San Francisco Rennaisance 1958

BEATS & OTHER ARTISTS OF THE 50'S

Artist's statement from Exposure Gallery exhibition, Vancouver July 1996
by Harry Redl

When I left Vancouver on a Greyhound bus for Mexico City in 1956, 1 was certain I was heading into a rainforest of adventure and illuminating experiences. Little did I know that two taxi drivers in San Francisco would change my life dramatically, before I even crossed the border into Mexico.

Our bus rolled into the San Francisco terminal and I stepped out to breathe the air for awhile and get a cup of coffee. As I walked through the gates onto the sidewalk, I noticed two cabdrivers, one on either side of the exit, who were obviously waiting for fares and conversing over the crowd of coming and going passengers. Fascinated by the relaxed quality of this scene, I hung back for awhile to listen. The talk of the two men was so knowing and full of signals and innuendo; in other words so "hip", that I could not forget it on the bus and by Los Angeles I had decided to spend my next vacation in San Francisco.

The city, called "Baghdad by the Bay" more than kept the promise made by its two random citizens. Photography became the core of my life in the following three years, shooting any creative person I could find in the Bay area, Los Angeles and New York.

First I went after writers I knew and admired, such as Henry Miller and Erskine Caldwell, Kenneth Patchen and Kenneth Rexroth. After each photo session with an artist, I asked them over a cup of coffee whom they considered promising, and generally got a dozen names of poets, painters, sculptors or composers. Whenever one name appeared on two or more lists, I called that person and asked them to allow me to come and take their picture.

Slowly I became part of the scene. When I called the poet and filmmaker James Broughton for an appointment, he answered with, "Well, it's about time!" When I asked him the meaning of his remark, he said, "Last Friday I was at a party and a friend asked me, 'Have you been Redl'd yet', so it is high time you called me!"

Artists as subjects teach one the most valuable lessons in portraiture. Picture an intelligent person with great sensitivity. A total stranger comes in and aims a threatening apparatus at that person. Mix that with a common fear of appearing less than oneself in pictures. Add a few drops of eternity and you have a lethal cocktail of unease. By the time the photographer has worked out a palette of antidotes, he or she is ready to photograph Masai warriors, Communist border guards and spike-haired punkers on the Kings Road in London.

Since few of my subjects had any money to speak of, I collected a lot of books, drawings and paintings, but got hungrier as time went on. So after a show at the City Lights Bookstore in 1959 and a show at the San Francisco Museum of Art, I set off in search of those warriors, border guards and punkers and became a photo journalist in Hongkong, traveling the world from then until recently.

But it was the two taxi drivers in San Francisco that started it all. I wish I had taken some pictures of them, so I could find them again and embrace them in gratitude!

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