He is best known for documenting the cultural phenomenon known as the Beat Generation from its inception in the 1950s.

Born in Brooklyn of Catholic and Protestant descent, he said his father "did nothing, never worked, a manic depressive who used to sit by the window and just stare out.

He bought his first camera at the 1939 World's Fair for 39 cents, but he did not start taking photographs as a vocation until he was a paratrooper in occupied Japan following World War II.

[1] He photographed people at the time of the Stonewall riots; those pictures were among those gathered in the book Gay Pride (1994), one of over a dozen books including his photographs.

He died in his sleep at his home in Greenwich Village a few hours after his 81st birthday.