Joey Trauchina: Beatitude

Beatitude - The Beat Attitude offers a fresh, deep look at the Beat Movement that changed the world in the decades following World War II. The book draws from the archive of little-known poet/photographer Joey Tranchina, who began documenting Beat culture in 1970. He chronicled surviving Beat predecessors, Bohemians from the 1930s; he located the Beat founders from the East and West Coasts and their descendants, creative spirits from remarkably varied fields-from both the visual and performing arts and from public policy and science. His photographs cast a wide net: the Beat precursors Kenneth Rexroth and Thelonious Monk, founders Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, and early feminist poets Diane di Prima and Lenore Kandel. Beat culture welcomed poets of social and cultural change Amiri Baraka and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and folk singers David Crosby and Phil Ochs, punk master Iggy Pop, rocker Country Joe McDonald, and activists Louis Lomax and Miriam Patchen.

Critic and art historian Anthony Bannon discovers a strong Beat aesthetic among the more than 80 artists depicted by Tranchina, stretching into the twenty-first century. Bannon argues that central to the Beat spirit are the concepts of spirit, change, freedom and values. Tranchina's photographs lead the way to appreciating these remarkable men and women; through their stories Beatitude illuminates both their experiences and this moment in history.

As a kid from the ranch stuck in the suburbs and an increasingly vocal non-Catholic in Catholic school, I did not have to pretend to be an outsider. Given my predilections, this generation was made for me. - Joey Tranchina