Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Poetry
  • Reviews
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

Beat Generation photographer Larry Keenan’s website relaunched

Denise Enck

Larry Keenan photography website

In 2002, Beat and counterculture photographer Larry Keenan asked me to build a website to document forty years of his Beat Generation and counterculture photography. Working with him and learning about his vast archive of photos was a treat. After Larry’s death in 2012, the site remained online, although mostly unmaintained.

Allen Ginsberg / copyright Larry Keenan
Allen Ginsberg

Last week, the site relaunched in mobile-friendly format. Out of respect to Larry, the the colors and layout remain the same as they were when he carefully chose them seventeen years ago.

The site is organized chronologically into topical galleries. Each photo is accompanied by Larry’s story about it.

And what stories he had! There are photos here of the Beats: Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Carolyn Cassady, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lenore Kandel, David Amram. You’ll also find Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, San Francisco rock bands, City Lights Books, and a great number of music and countercultural events (the Human Be-In, protests, Monterey Pop, etc.), from the 1960s and beyond.

Bob Dylan at the Piano, Berkeley 1965 / copyright Larry Keenan
Bob Dylan at the Piano, Berkeley 1965

And, Bob Dylan! The Dylan photos remain some of the site’s most popular: Larry photographed him in 1965 at City Lights with Ginsberg, McClure, Robbie Robertson, and the Orlovsky brothers — and in concert in Berkeley.

These are some of the most iconic photographs of the time and many have been reproduced over and over, in books about the Beats, the 1960s, and Bob Dylan.

Lenore Kandel and Timothy Leary / copyright Larry Keenan
Lenore Kandel and Timothy Leary

Larry documented the Bay Area literary and countercultural communities beginning in 1964, and the site covers forty years of photos, through 2004. You can see them at emptymirrorbooks.com/keenan.

Share on X (Twitter)Share on Facebook

Denise Enck

Denise is Empty Mirror's founder and editor. She's edited several other literary magazines and small-press publications since the 1990s. When not at Empty Mirror, you can probably find her reading or writing -- or out exploring the back roads and beaches of Washington State.

Author: Denise Enck Tags: Beat Generation, photography Category: News May 23, 2019

You might also like:

Herbert Huncke celebration
Celebrate the life of Herbert Huncke!
The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation
The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation
Bowles & I
Vast Regions from Nowhere: Paul Bowles, Unfathered Authors, Mother-Bonded Sons
seymour krim
Beat Generation Writer Seymour Krim

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I accept the Privacy Policy

 

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!


Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2025 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures