Up You Go Little Smoke—Kerouac / Pull My Daisy, 1959
Gelatin silver print
Image size: 3⅜ × 4⅝ in.
Sheet size: 10 × 8 in.
Titled and dated on recto / signed and inscribed on verso
Reproduced in Robert Frank: Storylines (Steidl, 2004)
Febryary 24, 2025
This photograph is a unique intersection of Robert Frank’s work in photography and film. The print is a film still, excerpted from Pull My Daisy, Frank’s landmark Beat Generation collaboration with Jack Kerouac, made in 1959. The film documents a bohemian gathering in an apartment, with the cast filled out by members of Frank’s social circle, including poet Allen Ginsberg, painter Larry Rivers, and even Frank’s young son Pablo. This still shows the aftermath at the kitchen table after Larry Rivers’ late night saxophone playing awakens a young boy played by Pablo, who joins in on his tenor horn.
The entire film is narrated by Jack Kerouac and the title inscription on the print alludes to a rare moment of tenderness in what is otherwise an uproarious film: while improvising the voice-over, Kerouac became mesmerized by the smoke rising from his ashtray and uttered the phrase: “Up you go little smoke.” Serendipitously, the phrase coincided with the moment when Larry Rivers picks Pablo up after he’s worn out from their impromptu jazz session, and Kerouac repeats the phrase in a sweet sing-song voice, as Rivers carries Pablo out of the room and back to bed, leaving their instruments on the kitchen table. The image of the discarded horns could be read as a fond remembrance of the spontaneous spirit of collaboration that infused Frank's film project and the way it paralleled Pablo's carefree youth.
Robert Frank visited our gallery in 2013, and when asked what it was like working with Kerouac on the film's narration, he replied "He did it in one take." That adventurous ethos could describe Robert's life and career as well.
