Message #156856

[Bianca]

Prestigious images



His landlady was the formidable Madame Rachou, who craftily monitored the activities of guests with a panel of bulbs on her front desk. They glowed according to how much electricity was being used in each room.

Harold used his bed-sheets, as well as his bed, to fashion a makeshift darkroom. He ate well on market discards.

I can re-trace his food-gathering routes, but it would be impossible now to follow his other centime-saving practice, foraging in the street for scraps of camera film.


  Up in my attic room, I listened to recordings he had made of how the hotel used to be. The interior: dark hall, dust, paint peeling, bust doors, cracked windows
 
Remarkably, some of his best known Beat images, now displayed in prestigious international galleries, were captured on small scraps of celluloid salvaged from unused ends of film thrown away by newsreel cameramen.

The Beat Hotel closed in 1963.

Harold had moved from room to room until he was the last left to turn out the lights. Madame Rachou and her bulbs had retired.