Ira Cohen: psychedelic photography master - in pictures

Jimi Hendrix photographed in Ira Cohen's Jefferson Street loft, from Mylar Chamber, New York, late 1960s. Ira recalled that Hendrix was rather shy and quiet. Hendrix said of Cohen’s Mylar Chamber images: 'Looking at your pictures is like looking through butterfly wings' Photograph: Ira Cohen

William S Burroughs in Cohen's New York loft, also part of his Mylar Chamber series. Cohen met Burroughs in Tangier, Morocco in the early 1960s, where he published Burroughs in his Gnaoua magazine Photograph: Ira Cohen

Roman Holiday
Another of the Mylar Chamber images. The subject is Jhil McEntyre, one of his major muses of the period and the mother of his son, Raphael Aladdin
Photograph: Ira Cohen

Jack Smith, the father of New York underground film and theatre. Jack was a mentor to Ira, shaping his artistic aesthetic. Here Smith was preparing for a session of reflective Mylar photographing when Ira captured him in Day-Glo makeup and props Photograph: Ira Cohen

Another Mylar Chamber image used by Life magazine, 26 December 1969, in its special issue to mark the end of the 1960s. The image illustrated a section on drugs which stated that 'few came as close to explaining the euphoric distortions of hallucinogenics' as Cohen Photograph: Ira Cohen

Bom Shankar, an ascetic of the Aghori sect
The Aghori's somewhat taboo ritual worship practices involve some or all of the following: meat eating, alcohol drinking, consumption of beverages and foods with opiates, hallucinogens and cannabis products as key ingredients, cannibalism, residing in cremation grounds and tantric sex rituals. Licking the skull shows the Aghori's fearlessness in the face of death. Sadhus, yogis and fakirs fascinated Cohen and he amassed a sizeable portrait gallery of what he termed Spirit Warriors Photograph: Ira Cohen

Allen Ginsberg, Life Mask
Part of Ira Cohen’s Bandaged Poets series, which first began when Ira met his second wife Caroline Gosselin in Amsterdam in the late 1970s. Gosselin had been making 'life masks' and Ira began photographing the process of bandaging all the noted poets that crossed their path. Cohen had originally published Ginsberg in Gnaoua in 1964. Cohen would later wryly comment that Allen Ginsberg made sure New York City wasn't big enough for two bearded Jewish poets Photograph: Ira Cohen

Julian Beck, the abstract expressionist painter and poet who, along with his wife Judith Malina, founded the Living Theatre. Julian was a tremendous inspiration and mentor to Cohen. Cohen’s film of the Living Theatre performances – Paradise Now – stands as an indelible document of the upheavals of the late 1960s Photograph: Ira Cohen

Petra Vogt in Kathmandu, Nepal, mid-1970s
Here, Cohen references La Malinche, a controversial figure in Mexican history. Ira was extremely well read and often conjured historical and mythological figures in his photographs and poems Photograph: Ira Cohen

Petra Vogt, Mutant
Vogt was a German actress working with the Living Theatre when Ira met her in New York in the late 1960s. She became his collaborator and muse, spending several years with him in India and Nepal. They were an exotic, theatrical couple, goading each other on and pushing their creative envelopes. She eventually became a nun of the Brahma Kumari sect, an international Hindu spiritual organisation Photograph: Ira Cohen

Miriam With Violin
Miriam was one of the many young travellers who availed themselves to Cohen's photo tableaus in Kathmandu, Nepal during his sojourn there in the mid-1970s Photograph: Ira Cohen

Chillum Baba
Cohen had a close association to the sect of Naga Babas, the Shiva worshipping, cannabis imbibing renunciates of Northern India. He photographed them extensively. They regularly smoked a mixture of tobacco and marijuana in cylindrical clay pipes as part of their ritual worship and their search for bliss
Photograph: Ira Cohen

Nepali Street Urchin
According to Cohen’s collaborator Ira Landgarten 'this was one of the ubiquitous urchins we regularly saw in the streets of Kathmandu. Already smoking cigarettes at a young age, Ira captured this young boy perfectly'
Photograph: Ira Cohen

Electronic Multimedia Shaman, from November 1982
This was taken during a visit to London in 1982 where Cohen read his poetry and exhibited his images for the first time in the UK at the October Gallery Photograph: Ira Landgarten

William S Burroughs with poet and author of The Basketball Diaries Jim Carroll. Cohen was active in New York’s downtown arts and poetry scene during the 1980s and 90s. He rarely went anywhere without his Pentax Spotmatic – his camera of choice for most of his career
Photograph: Ira Cohen

Master Musicians of Joujouka, Mohamed Mokhchan, Mohamed El Attar, Abdullah Ziyat and Abdeslam Dahnoun with the late Mohamed Hamri in Temple Bar, Dublin, 1992. In the early 1960s Cohen met Hamri in Tangier. Hamri was the Moroccan painter who introduced the Beat poets and Rolling Stone Brian Jones to the Sufi trance music of his village, Joujouka. This photograph was taken during the William Burroughs and Brion Gysin art exhibition, the Here to Go Show, at which both Cohen and Hamri exhibited Photograph: Ira Cohen