Anarchy, Protest, and Rebellion: And the Counterculture That Changed America

by Gloria S. McDarrah, Timothy S. McDarrah, Fred W. McDarrah (Photographer)

In a work of defiant ambition culled from over 5,000 photographs, Fred W. McDarrah's Sixties presents America's most tumultuous decade through the eyes of one man. As staff photographer for the leading counterculture weekly the Village Voice, McDarrah was everywhere—and he photographed everything and everybody. From the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to the Newark riots; from the Beatles' first American press conference to Andy Warhol's Factory; from Woodstock to the closing of the Fillmore East; from Broadway to Stonewall to Harlem to City Hall, Fred's award-winning pictures capture the struggle and the promise of the sixties and define a generation. Many of these photographs have never been published, or were seen only once in the Village Voice, where for forty years McDarrah ran the photo desk. A number of his portraits, like those of Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and Abbie Hoffman, have become some of the most celebrated icons of their subjects. These pictures represent a depth and breadth of public and private events and emotions, a view both political and startlingly intimate that is rarely found in the work of one man—a powerful synthesis of American photojournalism, cultural and political documentary and, despite McDarrah's modest protestations, art.

512 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2003

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Photographer Fred McDarrah was present at an amazing number of iconic Sixties events: the March on Washington, Woodstock, the Newark uprising, Vietnam Veterans Against the War's Dewey Canyon III protest, Andy Warhol's Factory and many others. He loved Manhattan streetscapes and the world of artists and intellectuals that gravitated to the Village and the Lower East Side: Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, among them. I particularly appreciated his images of the early happenings and experimental theater groups like the Living Theater and the Bread and Puppets theater. The compilation inevitably tilts strongly toward the east coast and as far as I can tell McDarrah had zero interest in getting outside cities, but it's a valuable resource and meditation on the Sixties.