Profile of Jack Kerouac. Copyright 2010 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

The photography of poet Allen Ginsberg, one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s, is the subject of a new exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the first scholarly exhibition of the iconic poet’s photography.

Titled Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, the exhibition includes nearly 80 photographs from the famed poet. The images include his earliest “drugstore prints” (photographs developed at local drugstores) when Ginsberg had just begun experimenting with photography in the early 1950s with a second-hand Kodak camera, as well as intimate portraits of Beat writers and artists like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady and himself.

Ginsberg abandoned photography in the ’60s, but with the encouragement of master photographers Robert Frank and Berenice Abbott he picked it back up in the early ’80s. The second part of the exhibit showcases his return to the art form.

Though he was best known for his poetry, Ginsberg’s work in photography has a special place in the art world not just because of the historical significance of the people he photographed, but also because of the sense of the poetic he brings to the images.

“The same ideas that inform his poetry—an intense observation of the world, a deep appreciation of the beauty of the vernacular, a celebration of the sacredness of the present, and a faith in intuitive expression—also permeate his photography,” the museum says of Ginsberg’s work.

Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg runs at the National Gallery of Art now through September 6, 2010.