FRED W. MCDARRAH (1926–2007)

Fred W. McDarrah, a Village Voice photographer who chronicled some of New York’s most important cultural and political events during more than three decades at the alternative weekly, has died, reports the Los Angeles Times. He was eighty-one. In his impressive career, McDarrah captured images of Beat-generation writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and photographed numerous artists including Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Eva Hesse, and Jasper Johns. He was there when the Stonewall riots erupted in 1969, marking the beginning of the gay rights movement, and when Senator Robert F. Kennedy toured a Lower East Side slum during his race for the presidency. He also published numerous books of his photography, including Anarchy, Protest, and Rebellion: And the Counterculture That Changed America. In 1960, he gained national recognition after he placed an ad in the Voice offering to rent “Genuine Beatniks—Badly Groomed but Brilliant (male and female).” He was flooded with responses to the ad and actually booked beatniks at various events throughout the New York area.