Roof With A View

A couple of San Francisco icons, as seen from neighboring rooftops: above, Coit Tower in North Beach, and below the famous Transamerica Pyramid.

Literary Landmark

Few bookstores in the U.S. – or even the world – have a pedigree like San Francisco’s City Lights: This is where “Beatnik” writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg found a home, at a time when no traditional publisher dared to touch what they wrote.

Today, City Lights is both an official San Francisco landmark and a vibrant independent bookstore, located in North Beach. Upstairs, there’s a whole room dedicated to Beatnik poetry.

I had a chance to photograph this icon of literature for the Swiss newspaper Le Temps. You can find a gallery with many more images on my photo website.