preview

Carleton University Art Gallery

Decent Essays

The Carleton University Art Gallery’s current exhibition We Are Continually Exposed to the Flashbulb of Death: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (1953-1996), is a linear timeline of the lives, romances, and works of the American Beat generation. The exhibition, curated by Barbara Fischer and John Shoesmith, is a survey of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs, which capture the freedom, artistic creations, and the open sexuality of this group. The organization of the exhibit, along with the added captions below each photograph, create a narrative of a past generation, both capturing and reflecting on an era. The Carleton University Art Gallery, commonly referred to as CUAG, opened on the Carleton University campus in September of 1992, and since then …show more content…

Photo number 38 is two side by side photos of two nude men. In the first image, they are covering themselves with their hands, with small grins on their faces. The second photo shows them standing more proud, revealing their bodies to the camera, with more serious looks. The caption scrawled below the images reveals that this is a portrait of Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Corso was also a writer and poet, popular in the 1960s and 1970s, who, just like the rest of the Beat generation, was interested in questioning the pre-existing academic, political, and social conventions of the world . The two nude photographs are so indicative of this movement, because they question societies preconceived ideas of nudity. The idea that the naked body is something inherently sexual, is a long-standing idea that many people in the Beat generation were questioning. This is not a sexual photograph, or even a romantic one. In his caption of the photograph, Ginsberg points out that they are “not lovers but poets and Jackanapes ”. This is just one of the many ways that Ginsberg manages to visually depict the thoughts and motives of this past era of

Get Access