Dale Smith

Writer/photographer/ad agency owner Dale Smith lives in Nevada City, CA. He has this to say about the photographs he took of Bob Dylan and friends in 1965 while a student at the California College of Arts and Crafts: I made these photographs at a private session arranged by Allen Ginsberg in 1965, when I was 19 years old. Michael McClure was one of my teachers at the California College of Arts and Crafts. On weekends, Michael would often invite my friend and fellow photographer Larry Keenan and me to his Downy Street flat in San Francisco. We would then head out to visit his friends, beat poets and artists including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Phillip Whalen, and Allen Ginsberg. Allen appreciated the photos we took of him. In December 1965, Dylan visited Allen at his Fell Street flat when he came to town for a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater. When Dylan saw the photos we¹d taken of Allen and Michael on the mantle above the fireplace and said, I’d like these guys to photograph the three of us together, or words to that effect. So Allen arranged a private session that took place in the alley behind City Lights Bookstore, an alley since renamed Jack Kerouac Way. Dylan actually paid me to take these photographs. He was my first paying client. I billed him $20 to cover film and process. Poor student that I was, I cashed his check, a move I regret to this day. I gave him a little book of the photos I took that day. He got his twenty bucks worth.