Ira Cohen – Kathmandu Portfolio

American photographer, poet and publisher Ira Cohen was born to deaf parents in the Bronx in 1935. After having dropped out of Cornell University, having married and having had two children with his wife Arlene Bond, Cohen sailed to Tangier in 1961, where he stayed for four years. In those years Cohen published his seminal Gnaoua journal with contributions by Jack Smith, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Harold Norse a.o. Cohen returned to the US in the mid-1960s, where he took inspiration from Bill Devore’s photographic work and started his famous series of mylars, which included portraits of Jimi Hendrix and William Burroughs. In 1968 Cohen directed his acclaimed films Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda and Paradise Now, documenting the Living Theatre’s US tour. With former Living Theatre member Petra Vogt Cohen travelled to Kathmandu in the early 1970s, where he published the delicate Starstreams poetry series on local rice paper together with Angus MacLise and the Bardo Matrix crew. Cohen stayed in Amsterdam for several periods during the mid and late 1970s, where his friends Simon Vinkenoog and Eddie Woods lived and fellow-expat William Levy introduced him to Gerard Bellaart from Rotterdam. Through his Cold Turkey Press Bellaart published Cohen’s Kathmandu Portfolio and From the Divan of Petra Vogt in 1976. In 1981 Cohen returned to New York, where he married and had a daughter with Caroline Gosselin. They divorced in 1989. Cohen spent the rest of life in New York and died of kidney failure in 2011.

Ira Cohen produced his Kathmandu Portfolio during a week’s stay in Rotterdam at his friend Gerard Bellaart’s place in 1976. The portfolio of 12 photographs was a joint production of John Chick’s Bardo Matrix imprint from Kathmandu, with whom Cohen and Angus MacLise had teamed up in 1974, and Gerard Bellaart’s Cold Turkey Press from Rotterdam. The jacket was silkscreened black and silver and Ira Cohen’s photos inside were printed offset as 12 separate postcards. 250 copies of the Kathmandu Portfolio were made. Available from Sea Urchin is a very good and complete copy of the portfolio with some wear to the jacket and Bellaart’s ex libris stamped on the inside of the jacket.