Dutch American artist Willem de Kooning (1904 – 1997) (center, with light hair) speaks with an unidentified couple at the top of a stoop next door to the Tanager Gallery (the storefront above the ‘Bar’ sign) on 10th Street, New York, New York, April 5, 1959.

“Perhaps no single photographer could be said to have captured the energy, the cultural ferment, the reverberating social change emanating from New York City in the second half of the 20th century as vividly as Fred W. McDarrah. McDarrah got his start covering the downtown beat of the Village Voice in the 1950s and ’60s, as that publication was defining a newly-emerged breed of independent journalism. McDarrah penetrated the lofts and coffeehouses of Lower Manhattan to shed light upon a new movement known as ‘The Beats’ and went on to capture on film the New York artists, activists, politicians, and poets who changed the…