CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/24/2018

Burt Glinn's 'The Beat Scene'—a national treasure

They painted, they wrote and performed. They smoked and they argued, dressed and undressed, they danced and drank and talked all night. From New York City's Gaslight Café on Macdougal Street to City Lights Books in San Francisco and all stops in-between, Magnum photographer Burt Glinn captured the Beat Scene in all its wild, unfettered, creative glory during the late 50s and early 60s. Most of these negatives were stored in archival boxes while Glinn focused on his Magnum assignments of the same years, and would have been forgotten entirely if Michael Shulman and Reel Art Press publisher Tony Nourmand hadn't discovered them while researching a Glinn retrospective. Luckily they did, and the result is a national treasure. Pictured here, in Glinn's own words from the West Coast Beats section, shot in 1960, "A French dancer improvising to the music at a party at artist David Stone Martin's studio loft apartment. The band play with both Eastern and Western instruments."