Item #40979 Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965. William S. BURROUGHS.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.
Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.

71.

Twenty-two 35mm b/w negatives on six strips featuring photographs by William Burroughs taken nearby his apartment at 210 Centre Street, New York, c. summer 1965.

Of the 22 frames, 17 document the aftermath of a traffic accident viewed from different perspectives.

Strips wrapped in glassine and contained in a contemporary ‘Negative File Pak’.

Accompanied by 21 prints scanned from the negatives by The Photographers’ Gallery in London for exhibition in “Taking Shots: William S. Burroughs” (January 17-March 30, 2014). Prints measure 10x14cm. (each one mounted on white art board measuring 12x16cm.). Some (possibly all) of the original prints are held in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.

The film’s first picture (left edge partially unexposed; not exhibited and no print included) was shot from the front of Burroughs’ apartment building and looks south towards the flow of one-way traffic heading north, framed through the angular ironwork of the fire escape.

The second image shows a truck with ‘Boy-Crest Clothes’ signage on its side panel, ‘Manufacturers of Boys & Students Clothes’. The name ‘Boy-Crest’ may have reminded Burroughs of Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, where he was sent as a teenager. It was run by a man whose motto was “I know what’s best for boys” and the school song began “Far away and high on the mesa’s crest/Here’s the life all of us love the best”. Burroughs particularly disliked the school's uniform of shorts, khaki shirts and Stetson Dakotas.

The following 17 frames depict the aftermath of a traffic accident on Centre Street, just north of the intersection with Grand Street, and feature various trucks - possibly involved in the collision - and a 1961 Chevrolet panel van owned by an air-conditioning company (pictured with severe front end damage). The scene, captured from several different viewpoints, shows bystanders on the sidewalk observing the goings-on, and onlookers watching from apartment windows and fire escapes above the local jewelers’ shops, as well as police, firemen and their FDNY vehicles.

The first of the final three frames depicts a street scene in nearby Chinatown; the second pictures an unidentified building’s fire escape; and the last shot, like the first, was taken by Burroughs from the fire escape landing outside his apartment (a vantage point from which he often made tape recordings of the street sounds below), this time looking north along Centre Street to the intersection with Grand Street.

A fascinating sequence of images, taken during the period Burroughs was preoccupied with his definitive book of methods (then called “Right Where You Are Sitting Now”, later published as “The Third Mind”), which was intended to include numerous photographic illustrations and montages.

Of the many thousands of photographs Burroughs took during his life, most have been lost. He had little interest in the technique of photography, nor any concern with the technology involved in their production. Since he also had no regard for negatives as artifacts, their survival is all the more unusual.

For their exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery, 21 prints were made from the strips of negatives, which were then mounted, framed and displayed in a grid of seven columns. The six negative strips, and a selection of eight images scanned from them, each one given the title “New York Car Accident”, are illustrated in Taking Shots: The Photography of William Burroughs (pp.32-48), a book published to accompany the exhibition.

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