[Cover title (printed):] Le petit voyage LSD. [Pa]r Marc Albert-Levin. [In ink:] (recollection). / [In ink:] Le petit voyage illustre. Nov. dec. 1966

[Fink, Larry]; Albert-Levin, Marc

Publication Date: 1967

About this Item

Original book dummy, composed by Marc Albert-Levin in 1967 ([Colofon:] "N. B.: Le rapporteur est rentré ŕ Paris dans la nuit du 31 décembre au 1er janvier." [in ink:] 1966). In grey cardboard cover, with a printed title vignette on the front cover. Another version of the title, written in hand, is also on the front panel. The text sheets (most of them are two sheets mounted together) are numbered (sometimes inconsistently) from 1 to 79, and the book also contains 15 unnumbered plates. The printed text is clipped and mounted on the pages in two columns, with handwritten corrections at numerous places in different inks. Illustrated with more than 650 original b/w photographs by Larry Fink (and some - supposedly - by the author) mounted on the pages, of which two are full-page, and the majority is in contact print forma. Le petit voyage LSD is Marc Albert-Levin's personal, psychedelic journal of his first trip to New York, richly illustrated with Larry Fink's black and white photos. Marc Albert-Levin (b. 1941), a French art critic, translator, poet, and collage artist visited New York for the first time in late 1966 as a journalist, writing for Les lettres françaises, the French weekly literary publication, edited by Louis Aragon. Later on, during the 1960s Albert-Levin returned to the city frequently and got in touch with the key musicians of the avant-garde and underground music scenes just as the leading figures of the contemporary American counterculture. In the 1970s, while already living in New York, Albert-Levin taught a course about Surrealism and Dadaism at The Cooper Union, worked as a cook in a vegetarian restaurant, and became Miles Davis' personal cook for a few months. Back in France, he organized concerts for Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton's quartet, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and François Tusques's quartet. Many of Albert-Levin's early articles about his first trip were published in the Les lettres françaises, and his first book, Un printemps ŕ New York (1969), was based upon the text of these articles amended with diary-like personal notes in between the pages. This one, just as his subsequent book, Tour de Farce (about the band The Fugs; 1970), appeared in the same format as the present maquette, and both were illustrated with Fink's photos. Le petit voyage LSD, apparently served as a progenitor of Albert-Levin's later books, although it could never be published, supposedly due to its particularly personal content, with several references to drugs, consumption of LSD, psychedelic experiences, or Timothy Leary and his circle. The book's less scandalous chapters on 1960s avant-garde jazz, literary, and artistic scenes of New York City thus also remained in the author's drawer. By Dore Ashton's recommendation, Albert-Levin's guides on his first trip were Richard Alderson, the "electronic genius" who at the time worked as an audio engineer at the ESP-Disc, the most important record company and label of free jazz and underground rock, and the photographer Larry Fink. (Weiss, 2012) Both Alderson and Fink had a wide knowledge of and access to the contemporary avant-garde jazz and underground music scenes in New York, just as to the hippest literary, artistic, and psychedelic circles, which - through his new friends - were frequented and documented by the author. More than 650 photos illustrate Albert-Levin's journal of which the majority was made by Fink and to our best knowledge never been published. Larry Fink (Laurence B. Fink; American, b. 1941) is renowned for his social documentary photographs, and his images of creative musicians, which he started to take already in the 1950s owing to his passion for music, especially jazz. Fink also pictured beatniks, boxers, and presidential candidates and had been exhibited at nearly every significant museum of modern art and photography. His most famous series, published in the monograph Social Graces (1984), depicts family celebrations and gatherings of the wealthy Manh. Seller Inventory # 2952

Bibliographic Details

Title: [Cover title (printed):] Le petit voyage LSD...

Publication Date: 1967