McDarrah, Fred W. 1926-2007 (Fred William McDarrah)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 5, 1926, in Brooklyn, NY; died November 6, 2007, in New York, NY. Photographer, photojournalist, editor, and author. McDarrah was a self-effacing, ordinary-looking, conventional fellow—the last sort one would expect to find "renting out" genuine Beatniks for parties and poetry readings, but he was—and he did. He was also, as a photojournalist with the Village Voice for some fifty years, perhaps the penultimate chronicler of the Beat generation and its successors. McDarrah worked for the alternative newspaper from 1958 until his death, as staff photographer, picture editor, and finally consulting picture editor. McDarrah's photographs captured evocative images of the counterculture, from the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in the 1950s to Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin a decade later, and Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, and a host of others in between. In the course of his long career, he befriended some of these subjects, mentored others, and supported all when he could, even to the extent of acting as an unofficial booking agent via eye-catching and extraordinarily successful newspaper ads offering their speaking services throughout the New York metropolitan area. McDarrah's award-winning photographs were eventually exhibited all over the world, from the Wadsworth Athenaeum to the Alfred Stieglitz Gallery to the Detroit Institute of Arts, but he never thought of himself as an artist. He described himself as a "photo reporter" or photojournalist, and his books attest to his gift for telling stories in photographs. These books, often produced in collaboration with his wife, Gloria, or sons Patrick or Timothy, include The New Bohemia (1966), Kerouac and Friends: A Beat Generation Album (1984), Gay Pride: Photographs from Stonewall to Today (1994), Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village (1996), and Anarchy, Protest, and Rebellion: And the Counter-culture That Changed America (2003).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2007, p. B9.

New York Times, November 8, 2007, p. A29.