Joan Ganny Artist Statement

I crossed paths with Charles Bukowski when my friend and colleague Glen Esterly asked me to shoot photos to accompany his Rolling Stone interview. I turned him down initially, put off by Bukowski’s “dirty old man’’ rep, based on his columns in The Free Press. After Glen convinced me to attend a poetry reading at Cal State LA, I realized that there was much more to this ribald rogue who wrote about society’s unsung underbelly from a personal perspective. One photographic encounter led to another, and Hank introduced me to Carl Weissner, his friend, agent, and the translator of his German editions. It was through Carl’s efforts that my portraits first appeared throughout Germany during Bukowski’s 1976 ‘’homecoming” tour, and on the covers of translated editions around the world: including Finland, Israel, Iran, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, France, Italy, Albania, the Czech Republic, and the UK.

My portraits of Charles Bukowski have been exhibited in galleries in London, Helsinki, and Andernach, Germany, as well as the Huntington Library in Pasadena, Huis Marseille photography museum in Amsterdam, and Paris Photo. After his death in 1994, I discovered a box of negatives with images that revealed his essence, not the more familiar shots of the grinning writer with the beer and the babe. Eighteen of these portraits were coupled with unpublished poems (provided by Black Sparrow publisher John Martin) in my monograph The Cruelty of Loveless Love, a handmade, collector’s-edition of 50, (Kunst Editions New York, 2001.) Last year, in preparing an exhibition for an international Bukowski conference at the University Bordeaux Montaigne, I happened upon a series of color photographs I had taken as “a warmup” for our first photo session back in 1975. I have selected four of these to be shown in this exhibition, now beautifully faded Kodachrome.

The portraits should speak for themselves. Like his writing, or a good Rorschach test, Charles Bukowski is in the eye of the beholder.

I would like to dedicate this exhibition to Glen Esterly, Carl Weissner, and John Martin.