Ira Cohen : The photographic hallucinatory
poet, publisher, photographer and a film-maker
(February 3, 1935 — April 25, 2011)
Ira Cohen’s style/subject of shoot :
Though I discovered Ira Cohen a few days earlier I became obsessed with his very unconventional and innovative style of photography. He was an artistic poet, publisher, film-maker and a photographer. Ira Cohen’s literary archive now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
In the middle of his ‘little’ life, he took up photography very seriously. His remarkable innovation was his chamber/studio where he transformed the walls and ceilings with huge sheets of Mylar, a reflective polyester film. Rather, taking pictures of his subject he used to take the photos of their distorted reflections on the chamber walls and ceiling giving a surreal flowy artistic look to the composition . He took pictures of some of the most popular musicians in the Mylar chamber including William Burroughs, Jimi Hendrix, Alejandro Jodorowsky, etc. The photographer and film-maker Gerard Malanga called the Mylar chamber “a kaleidoscope where the reflections being photographed constantly changed”.
His style was very much inspired 60's psychedelic musicals in those Andy Warhole’s (one of the founders of pop art) hay days, Cohen did became an integral part of the underground art scene. In 1970 Cohen’s Mylar chamber photographs were used on the cover of the album Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus by the psychedelic rock band Spirit and on the jacket of the first novel by Burroughs’s son, William Jr.
The surrealistic and psychedelic portraits were described by Hendrix as “like looking through butterfly wings”
Career :
Cohen was born on 3rd Feb 1935 in New York City. He was an American poet, publisher, photographer and a film-maker. Though he did studied in the Cornell University, he dropped out then enrolled at the School of General Studies of Columbia University . Cohen married Arlene Bond, a Barnard student, in 1957. They had two children, David Schleifer and Rafiqa el Shenawi
In his early years he emerged himself in poetry though he did not pursued photography seriously, returning to New York in 1960s his life took a traversing turn when In his loft on the Lower East Side, Cohen created the “mylar images”, the chamber of a reflective polyester film covering almost the whole chamber. In 1968 he directed the “phantasmaglorical” film Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda , a film of the Living Theatre’s historic American tour a psychedelic romp that features the Mylar chamber and scenes inspired by the work of Julian Beck’s Living Theatre company.
In the 70s with his company living theatre member Petra Vogt he went to the himalayas and started a series of poetry under Bardo Matrix imprint in Kathmandu. There he developed bookmarking art, native craftsmanship, etc. Then, in mid 70s he did returned to New York for a photographic show. Louise Landes Levi — poet, musician & translator with whom Cohen later collaborated on many projects & Gerard Bellaart beame Cohen’s first publisher. He did met Eddie Woods in his trip to kathmandu who co-founded Ins and Outs Press with Jane Harvey.
In 1981, Cohen returned to New York and moved in with his mother in an Upper West Side apartment. In 1982 he married Carolina Gosselin, and they had a daughter, Lakshmi Cohen, before divorcing in 1989. Cohen later directed the film Kings With Straw Mats (1998), a documentary about the Kumbh Mela gathering in India, and released the album The Majoon Traveller. Cohen in 1992 participated in a Burroughs and Gysin exhibition in Dublin, displaying his Mylar images and other work. In October 2007, an exhibit of Cohen’s portrait photographs widmer-theodoridis contemporary gallery in Zurich and also an exhibit of his mylar photographs opened in London at the October Gallery. He died in April 2011, though his remarkable works will be remembered for ever.
Cohen’s work :
Brain Damage: Sorcery as Art Photograph by Ira Cohen
‘The Guardian’
‘Spirit: Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus’ Photograph by Ira Cohen 1970
One of Cohen’s greatest poetry called - An Act of Jeopardy
for Garcia Lorca
A star of blood you fell
from the point of the hypodermic
singing of fabulous beasts &
spitting out the sex of vowels
Your poems explode in the mouth
like torrents of sperm on a night full of zebras & bootheels
Your ghost still cruses the river-
fronts of midnight assignations
in a world of dead sailors carrying armfuls of flowers in search of your unmarked grave
Your body no sanctuary for bees,
Death was your lover in a rain of broken obelisks & rotting orchids
In the tangled rose of a single heartbeat
I offer you the shadow of a double profile, two heads held together at the bridge of the nose by a nail of opium smoke in the long night’s dreaming & memory of water poured between glasses
In my mailbox I find a letter from a dead man & know that for every shadow given one is taken away
Yet subtraction is only a special form of
addition and implies a world of hidden
intentions below a horizon of lips
thin as your fingernail sprouting
mysteries in the earth …
The ace of spades dealt from the bottom of the deck severs the hand which retrieves it & the eyes of Beauty sewn together peer over a black lace fan in the vulgar sunlight of a Spanish morning without horses The Belt of Orion is loosened
before you as you remove the silver
fingerstalls from your mummy hands &
kneel to plunder the nightsky in a shower of bitter diamonds.
(Somewhere under a blanket someone weeps for a lover.)
Peace to your soul
& to your empty shoes
in the dark closets of
kings with no feet!!!
In my opinion Ira Cohen was one of the most creative and inspiring personality. From such a great variation in his works starting from poems, writings, photography, to making movies he has always pushed the boundaries of these art-forms.
The reason I personally loved Cohen’s work of art is because he has an amazing photographic abstraction but without losing the basic details of the subject which looks almost illustrative in nature. Though it’s very surreal, every time I see his work I always discover something new in these chaos of colours and lights . The mind-set he went through to come up with such an innovation needs a depth on that particular field for such style evolution and I feel it’s not just for photography but for any creative process. His photographic works and even his poems were primarily inspired from the psychedelic 60's era and the musicians of those times such as Jimi Hendrix, MacLise, Ornette Coleman Master Musicians of Joujouka, etc . Also, traversing around the world gave him an insight to his style form in film making as well. His very concept of not commercializing his work of art and style and keeping it underground separates him from lots mainstream stereotypes and I think that is one of the reason he could manifest such works.
Lastly, I would like to say that through people like these we have evolved to a new dimension of thinking. For any personal creativity to grow it is essential to gain, inspire and be engraved in the depth of any art form so as Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 — April 25, 2011).
