In Focus: Fred W. McDarrah

Over the last month or so I’ve been reading The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano. A massive, detailed, oral history of what it was like to work for such an iconic publication, through every phase of its lifespan, by the writers and artists who made it what it was. Fred McDarrah was one of those artists, staff photographer for the Voice for fifty years.

parsimonious - adjective
    1. unwilling to spend money or use resources; frugal or stingy

This term was how Tim McDarrah referred to his father’s shooting style in The Freaks Came Out to Write. He would show up to an event, shoot a few frames, then turn and leave. Fred showed up on the second night of Stonewall, shot nineteen frames, and left; he was the only photographer who bothered to document the uprising (though it wasn’t called such at the time), and one of his photographs became synonymous with the start of a massive cultural movement.

Young people outside the Stonewall Inn, June 28, 1969

One of the most famous images of Bob Dylan is McDarrah’s, and on the occasion that photograph was made, outside the Sheridan Square offices of the Voice, he only took a handful of shots.

Bob Dylan, sitting on a bench in Christopher Park, January 22, 1965

Parsimonious as he may have been with his film, McDarrah was still prolific and seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the neighborhood. Often he was the only photographer to document what would later be seen as significant moments in the countercultural fabric of the bohemian village, sometimes without being aware how important those moments would come to be.

“There’s a picture of [Bob] Dylan, Joan Baez, and [Noel Paul Stookey] from Peter, Paul and Mary, alone backstage at the Lincoln Memorial, and my dad figures, “Everybody’s gonna have pictures of Martin Luther King, but I’m gonna go and take pictures of these three unknowns.”” – Tim McDarrah, The Freaks Came Out to Write, page 38

Folksingers Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Noel Paul Stookey warm up at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963

I was present in 2019 when his family received, on his posthumous behalf, the Regina Kellerman award for preserving the cultural heritage of the village at the Village Preservation Awards. McDarrah’s photography has run parallel to most of the historical non-fiction I have consumed, even informing some of it. His work has been ever-present in my quest to learn as much as I can about the history of New York City, though I never stopped to recognize his impact. The reason we have documentation of some of the most significant occurrences in NYC history, especially of the 1960's and 70's, is thanks to Fred and The Village Voice.