[ANONYMOUS.] Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Janine Pommy Vega.

The Beats in Bed

[ANONYMOUS.] Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Janine Pommy Vega. New York?, home developed. C. 1960.

Two gelatin silver prints (both 125 x 175 mm); minimal foxing to both prints, and slight foxing to verso; image sizes 110 x 165 mm and 120 x 170 mm; both in white wood window mount frames (210 x 260 x 40 mm)

Two extraordinary and unique photographs of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Janine Pommy Vega in bed.

Allen Ginsberg met Peter Orlovsky in December 1954 in San Francisco, when the latter was working as a model for the painter Robert LaVigne. Ginsberg broke off his relationship with Sheila Boucher in order to pursue a more serious one with Orlovsky. Their relationship, remaining open partially due to Orlovsky’s bisexuality, became a lifelong partnership which they referred to as a ‘marriage sealed by vows’. With Ginsberg’s encouragement Orlovsky began writing in 1957 while they were living in Paris. The following year, they moved into an apartment in New York’s East Village.

Fellow beat poet Janine Pommy Vega also moved into the apartment for a time in 1960, just after having graduated from high school aged eighteen. These photographs of the three of them in bed together are deeply personal testaments to their relationships as well as a reflection of shifting attitudes towards sex and sexuality.

The many white spotted markings (possibly from dust on the photographic negative during the printing process), a misalignment of one of the images, and shallow tonal range, suggest an unprofessional printing process. Due to the nature of these photographs, it appears that they were developed privately.

SKU: 2125279