1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On Hydra

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DrHGuy
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1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On Hydra

Post by DrHGuy »

Some interesting photos of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, and Axel Jensen on Hydra which I had never seen before (including the one seen above). All were taken by James Burke for Life magazine and all bear the date Oct 01, 1960

Two photos identify (I think) the wrong woman as Marianne, but the two shots showing Axel Jensen, Marianne, and Leonard Cohen in the same frame are especially intriguing.
Last edited by DrHGuy on Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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B4real
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by B4real »

Hi Allan,

I left a message on your site but I wanted to reply here too. I love any old photos of Leonard and these are just great :D As that isn't Marianne in the last two photos, I wonder who it actually is? Maybe someone here knows.

Bev
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Attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy ~ me ...... The magic of art is the truth of its lies ~ me ...... Only left-handers are in their right mind!
3mariza1
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by 3mariza1 »

guess: no marianne 2.ssa the photo below, the section is capped off, but here she is blond woman on the right.

http://1heckofaguy.com/2009/03/07/leona ... -archives/

-mariza-
holydove
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by holydove »

DrH, thank you so much - those photos are so beautiful & fascinating!! That is definitely not Marianne in that last 2 photos (no idea who it is!). But you are right - the photos that show Leonard, Marianne & Axel (Marianne's "partner") are quite intriguing! Interesting that Axel is standing, while everyone else is sitting, & esp. while Leonard is sitting - next to Marianne - I love it!! And I really love the one showing Leonard, Marianne, & Axel (Marianne's son) at the beach - how very SWEET!!
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by 3mariza1 »

Lovely photos. Marianne is really beautiful and natural and Axel so cute. I think .. how are "Little" Axel today?
-3mariza1-
Last edited by 3mariza1 on Tue Aug 02, 2011 11:15 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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B4real
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by B4real »

3mariza1 wrote:I often think .. What the "Little" Axel today is?
This may answer your question:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23301&p=253884&hilit=axel#p253972

I also found this photo similar to Dr H's first one:
I wonder who the dark haired woman is?
I wonder who the dark haired woman is?
It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to B4real ~ me
Attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy ~ me ...... The magic of art is the truth of its lies ~ me ...... Only left-handers are in their right mind!
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daveeliver
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by daveeliver »

Hi DHG,
I'm not sure how far in advance the planning of your calender is, but one of these photos would be ideal for the month of June, the regular date for the biennial Hydra meet up.

Thanks for everything you've done
Dave
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Andrew (Darby)
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by Andrew (Darby) »

B4real wrote:
3mariza1 wrote:I often think .. What the "Little" Axel today is?
This may answer your question:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23301&p=253884&hilit=axel#p253972

I also found this photo similar to Dr H's first one:
lc, marianne, axel on hydra 1960.jpg
With reference to the question under the photo, I have a funny feeling that the couple in this photo are George Johnson & Charmian Clift, as there is certainly a likeness between the dark haired man & the one of George in the photo depicted in this link:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/T ... 67738.html

Cheers,
Andrew :)
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264811403188
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by 264811403188 »

On October 1, 1960, little Axel was still a baby, so it must have been someone else's son with them on the beach.
I'm also not sure which of the men on the different photos is Marianne's husband Axel Jensen. Does somebody know?
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holydove
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by holydove »

264811403188 wrote:On October 1, 1960, little Axel was still a baby, so it must have been someone else's son with them on the beach.
I'm also not sure which of the men on the different photos is Marianne's husband Axel Jensen. Does somebody know?
That's certainly true about Marianne's son - duh!! - little Axel is the one in the baby carriage in the other 1960 photos!! So who is this boy at the beach - did George Johnston/Charmain Clift have a young son at that time?

I assumed the man who was standing was Marianne's "partner," Axel Jensen, because he is the only one that is in both photos, & the captions under both photos say that he is in the photo. But the captions could be inaccurate, like the ones that say Marianne is in the photo, & we know that is not Marianne in those photos. . .
264811403188
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by 264811403188 »

I thought it was Axel Jensen on the left, behind the dark man, in photo 1, and again in photo 6, behind Leonard on his left. This I assumed according to another photo of Marianne and Axel sitting on a bench with a dog, which I have in my collection (but do not know how to paste on this site, sorry!) .

Wasn't Marianne actually married to Axel Jensen?
GMKarsten
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Sophia
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by Sophia »

Axel Jensen is the one sitting in the first photo, the standing man is Tore Bernitz Pedersen, Norwegian artist and friend of Axel Jensen. Not so sure about the little boy, but he looks like Martin Johnston, son of George Johnston & Charmian Clift (he died in 1990).Here are some photos of the Johnstons on Hydra:
http://johntranter.com/prose/mj.shtml
http://jacketmagazine.com/01/mj-photos.html

Sophia
3mariza1
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by 3mariza1 »

-
Last edited by 3mariza1 on Sun Jan 01, 2012 1:33 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by lizzytysh »

It seems the only one they got right every time was Leonard :lol: ; hopefully, he was the focus of their article.
LIFE always had such a good rep... it's gotta make ya wonder, though, doesn't it?
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st theresa
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Re: 1960 Photos Of Leonard Cohen, Marianne, Axel Jensen On H

Post by st theresa »

I went looking and found this 2005 article on George Johnston and Leonard Cohen. It is probably already here somewhere but fits in quite well with these photos.

George Johnston & Leonard Cohen
Shane Maloney
EMAIL | PRINT | NEWSLETTER | Facebook Facebook | Twitter Twitter |

On a wet March afternoon in 1960 an unknown 25-year-old Canadian poet was wandering the streets of London. Since his arrival three months earlier he’d bought himself a blue Burberry raincoat, an Olivetti typewriter and completed an autobiographical novel. Now it was time to find somewhere warm to relax, drink and meet women. Somewhere cheap. Noticing a Bank of Greece sign, he stepped inside and saw a teller with a deep tan and sunglasses. Within a few days Leonard Cohen was boarding a steamer in Piraeus for the five-hour trip to Hydra.

What he found was a cluster of whitewashed houses arrayed around a small horseshoe-shaped harbour. Many of the houses were uninhabited and there were no cars or trucks, few telephones, limited electricity and, despite the name, little fresh water. At the end of the cobbled waterfront stood the Katsikas brothers’ grocery store. In its backroom bar, amid tins of olive oil and sacks of flour, he met an Australian expatriate named George Johnston.

It was five years since Johnston and his writer wife Charmian Clift had settled on Hydra, trading the security of a newspaper career for the vagaries of a literary life. Things were not going well. At 48, Johnston’s glory days as a war correspondent and foreign editor were behind him and My Brother Jack was in difficult gestation. He was ill, impoverished, impotent and battling to eke a living from his work. But as presiding spirit of the island’s shifting cast of foreign artists and writers, he was nothing if not hospitable.

George and Charmian put young Len up in their spare room and George arranged for him to perform some of his songs for the cosmopolitan assortment of authors, painters and musicians who frequented the Katsikas grocery, a group that included Marianne Jensen, wife of a Norwegian novelist. To Cohen, raised in an affluent Jewish family in suburban Montreal, his Australian hosts had a larger-than-life, mythical quality. “They drank more than other people, they wrote more, they got sick more, they got well more, they cursed more and they blessed more, and they helped a great deal more. They were an inspiration.”

When Cohen decided to stay on Hydra and set up house for himself, they contributed a bed and a work table. And in a way, perhaps, they had also introduced him to his muse. That’s her, Marianne, sitting at the table with the typewriter on the back cover of his 1969 album Songs from a Room. By then Cohen was the high priest of pathos, the bird on the wire, the dirge-master general. Charmian had taken her own life. And tuberculosis, cigarettes and booze would soon do the deed for George.
Published in The Monthly, November 2005, No. 7

* Previous story: 'Two Lives' by Vikram Seth
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