Harry Redl : Portraits of the Beat Generation
San Francisco Rennaisance 1958
Harry Redl self-portrait
The Vancouver Province
March 1, 1999
Master's life through the lens
by Lee Bacchus
You are perusing one of Harry Redl's photo albums.
But this ain't no ordinary pastiche of birthday cakes and Hawaiian sunsets.
For starters, there is a mesmerizing black-and-white portrait of Allen Ginsberg as a very young man -- circa 1958.
 Harry Redl in his West Vancouver home. His photo of Ansel Adams is on the table. Photo by Jon Murray |
"I took that on the day Ginsberg did his first public reading of Howl," says Redl, a photographer extraordinaire who lives in a West Vancouver townhouse. "At the time, Ginsberg was working as a baggage handler in a Greyhound bus station."
In a tingle of recognition, you realize you are looking at not only the birth of the famous Beat Generation in San Francisco but arguably the genesis of the entire post-war counter culture of hippies, punks, New-Agers and general all-purpose society ne'er-do-wells.
But there's more. A striking series of shots of writer Henry Miller at his Big Sur house in California. Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Bookstore. Neal Cassidy in San Quentin prison. Canadian poet Irving Layton in a Montreal cemetery. Miles Davis. Duke Ellington. Anais Nin. And the last portrait taken of Jack Shadbolt.
In a way, you can think of Harry Redl as a kind of Forrest Gump in reverse. Somehow he managed repeatedly to place himself at the crossroads of history but, unlike Gump, Redl did it with intelligence and a canny anticipation. Now 72, Redl left his job as a 20-something waiter at Stanley Park's Ferguson Point teahouse and began shooting with a $100 Rolleiflex camera. "And the rest, as they say, is more problems," quips Redl.
Now you're flipping through the laminated pages of another album. These of Life Magazine covers from another era. The Aug. 21, 1964, issue, for instance, in which a steely eyed Vietnamese officer surveys the horizon and Redl's own caption -- "General Khanh eyes the enemy."
Another Life cover -- this one from the streets of Communist China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution -- some of the first to come out of the country. There are the shots Redl took in the midst of the 1968 Russian invasion of Prague -- which Redl says were the first to be seen in colour. And none of these are pedestrian photographs, either. They are eerily dramatic, the kind of historical "reality" that put Life Magazine on virtually every coffee table in North America through the '50s and '60s and turned photojournalism into an art form.
Such is the problem trying to contain Redl within the confines of a tabloid newspaper page. Not only are his shots seemingly bigger than life, his own life is literally all over the map.
And so some sketchy snapshots:
- Comes to Canada after befriending some Canadian Army officers while he was a prisoner-of-war (he was an Austrian who served in the German navy). Works for a while on a Medicine Hat farm.
- Moves to Vancouver, then on a bus trip to Mexico stops in San Francisco. Is enamoured by the hipsters on the street -- "The creative energy there was palpable" -- and vows to return.
- Does so and spends the next few years taking portraits of the key artistS and writers in the burgeoning San Francisco "beat" movement. Incredibly, he does not do drugs. Time-Life uses him as a source and liaison for stories on this Bay Area renaissance.
- A love of Asian women and the film The World of Suzie Wong prompts another move -- this time to Hong Kong in the early '60s. Becomes one of the first photojournalists to get into Red China. "It was unbelievable," Redl says. "Just a mass of red. When I came out there were 200 to 300 journalists who all wanted to buy my pictures."
- Marries his Chinese wife Violet.
- Dispatched by Life to Saigon, where he would cover the suddenly escalating Vietnam War.
- First of Redl's two children is born, a son. Sends telex to Life: No more Vietnam.
- Returns to Vienna to live. Second child is born, a girl. Sneaks into Prague during the Russian invasion and occupation by pretending to be a tourist. "Prague became my new Saigon." Brings film out hidden in his son's diapers.
- Moves yet again to Phoenix, where he and family spend next 17 years. Redl makes two round-the-world trips annually, doing shoots for corporate clients.
- Returns to Vancouver, where he now works primarily from his vast photo archive -- a kind of visual treasure largely ignored by local gallery gatekeepers blinded by their own parochialism. "They always ask, 'Where are the Canadians?'" Redl says. "Well, what am I? A Purolater courier? I'm a Canadian."
But Redl is too upbeat to hold a long grudge. He still borrows from that "vortex of energy" he found in '50s San Francisco.
"The whole evolution of my job has been so wonderful," says Redl, still speaking through an accent he brought from Austria a half-century ago.
"I've fulfilled every thirst and every hunger."
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Artist's Statement
Georgia Straight
Simon Fraser News
Vancouver Province
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