Beat Visions and the Counterculture

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Allen Ginsberg (American, 1926 – 1997)

Peter Orlovsky, Wm. S. Burroughs, Alan Ansen, Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles & Myself, all gathered with our cameras in Bill’s garden at Villa Muneria [sic] Tanger 1961

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Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, William Burroughs, Michael Portman, Villa Muneria [sic], Tanger 1961

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Peter Orlovsky, Bill Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Ansen, Gregory Corso with Minox, Ian Sommerville standing, Paul Bowles seated, bright sunshine, Villa Muneria [sic] 1961

1961
printed later and inscribed for Paul Bowles
gelatin silver print
Paul Bowles Papers

These three photographs chronicle a time that William S. Burroughs later called a “psychedelic summer.” In 1961, Burroughs spent the summer months in Tangier, a Moroccan port city that was popular with artists and expatriates. The photographs were taken in the garden of the Villa Muniria where Burroughs had a room. They document the community of writers and artists with whom Burroughs associated: Ginsberg himself, Ian Sommerville, a British computer programmer who became Burroughs’s companion, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, writer Paul Bowles, poet Alan Ansen, and a young British student named Michael Portman.

In his inscriptions, Ginsberg calls attention to the men’s cameras, including Corso’s spy camera, the Minox.