Paul Kagan

In a sweeping review of the world of the ’60s when all eyes were fixated on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury counter-culture that gave birth to “flower children,” psychedelic drugs, and music that spoke to the heart of the civil rights movement, “A Gada Da Vida” (“In the Garden of Eden”), a major body of work by celebrated photographer Paul Kagan, will be seen for the first time in South Florida. Chicago-born Kagan had, at the age of 10, already distinguished himself as a photographer in a career that was to take serious shape in the late ’50s when his family moved to Los Angeles. While still in high school, he led the Woolworth picket lines. By the time he entered Berkeley in 1960, Kagan was listed by the House Un-American Activities Committees as one of the country’s most dangerous radicals traveling to Europe and Morocco, taking photos along the way. He returned to San Francisco to open “Electric Tibet,” the first head shop on Telegraph Avenue, which was frequently published in “The Oracle,” the hippie era’s famed newspaper. Universally remembered are the photos of a child sharing a saddle with a mounted policeman in Golden Gate Park and another, “Yum Yam,” of a couple having sex in the lotus position with an overlay of psychedelic images and colors. Many of his unpublished works, including erotic phonographs, photos of the Monterey Pop Festival, the Human Be-In of 1967, and the People’s Park protests of 1969, will be on view at WEAM.