Exposures
Carl

Exposures · Volume Two

Carl

Sixty defaced faces — the managed mind and the cry that escapes it — inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

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AI-generated (Midjourney) + Photoshop · prompts by Hulki Okan Tabak · January 2026 · inspired by Ginsberg’s Howl · made with Claude · © the author.

for Carl Solomon, 1928–1993

I’m with you in Rockland

— Allen Ginsberg, Howl

IThe Best Mindsthe destroyed generation — the face smeared, struck out, gone to smoke

A man in a black wide-brimmed hat and dark coat, his face a blank glowing-yellow void, against a teal and ochre ground.
1The Light Took His Face
A hatted figure at dusk, the face smeared and running reddish, a faint waterfront dissolving behind him.
2His Face Ran Like Wax
A young man’s portrait blurred almost to abstraction, a streak of gold light crossing the smeared face.
3The Photograph Forgets Him
A man with a cigarette before a yellow wall, his face breaking up into smear and smoke.
4He Came Apart Mid-Sentence
A figure in a white three-piece suit and yellow hat whose face is a clean black void, a man-shaped hole.
5The Best-Dressed Absence
A suited man dissolving upward into grey smoke, gloves still on, the head all but gone.
6He Went Up Like Smoke
A yellow-toned face with a heavy black bar of sunglasses blotting out the eyes.
7Eyes Struck Out
A dark portrait with a single horizontal yellow paint-bar drawn across the eyes.
8Struck From the Record
An old-master-style portrait in a yellow tie, the face scraped and flecked, gold scratches raked across the eyes.
9Gold Scratched Over His Eyes
A dark face in aviator sunglasses against a flat yellow ground.
10The Eyes Were Not for Sale
A figure in yellow-tinted glasses turning his gaze aside in warm yellow light.
11He Looked Away
A pop-art icon with white-blond hair, black rectangular shades and a red tie, flatly lit.
12He Was No Angel
A blond dandy with black disc-eyes in an out-of-time coat and stock, like a powdered portrait gone wrong.
13He Wore the Wrong Century
A frontal head with blue-white skin and opaque amber goggles for eyes, lit like an icon.
14The Brass-Eyed Saint
A hatted man in profile shadowed by a second identical profile behind him, dusk tones.
15He and His Other
A small seated figure with a faintly glowing lit collar, alone in a dim room.
16Small Pilgrims
A blocky head scribbled in ballpoint blue on a deep blue ground, set on a small plinth.
17Scribbled in Blue
A long-haired silhouette in profile in a blue room, a framed picture on the wall.
18The Blue Hour
A lone figure at a lit doorway in a blue night city, light reflecting on the wet ground.
19The Door Was the Only Light
A man at a table reading by the small flare of a struck match in the dark.
20He Read by One Match

IIMolochthe machine and its clerks — the god that eats its own

An aproned officiant standing at a dark table, a faint cathedral behind him.
21Moloch in an Apron
A hatted figure with glowing eyes holding out a tray of small pink-and-silver canisters.
22The Vendor of Small Comforts
Rows of identical seated men in suits and yellow glasses, an assembly line of faces.
23Standard Issue
A grid of blurred, faceless suited men, processed and identical.
24Moloch’s Clerks
A crowd of blank-faced men in suits shoulder to shoulder, vertical gaps of light between them.
25Everyone Wore the Same Face
A dark frontal face in heavy glasses above a faint frieze of tiny figures.
26Everyone He’d Ever Seen
A blank-headed figure in a suit whose necktie hangs like a noose, small birds and figures around him.
27The Rope Was a Tie
A man in suit and tie before a long receding line of identical figures, the queue going on without him.
28The File
A Black man in large 1970s glasses and a suit standing over a small frieze of a crowd.
29The Best Mind of His Generation
A heavy-set man in a pale suit and dark glasses, hard-lit and looming.
30The Father
A lone watcher on a deck before a colossal head rising over a seaside asylum.
31Moloch by the Sea
A man seen from behind with a briefcase, facing a lit cube where a tiny crowd files in.
32He Stood Outside the Light
Two silhouettes watching a glowing, burning house across dark water.
33They Watched the House Burn

IIIRocklandthe ward — the dyads, the visiting hours, the witnesses

A motion-blurred man seated on a vast yellow shore, a distant house and small groups beyond.
34He Sat Where the Land Ran Out
A lone hatted figure outside a dark blue house at night, one window glowing yellow.
35The Lit Window Was Not His
A seated man in suit and tie on a bare plain, a far white dome on the horizon.
36The Cure
A man seated among pale carved statues in a dim room, as if taking tea with the stone figures.
37Among the Carved
A man in a black hat seated before a long yellow sofa in an empty room.
38The Waiting Room
An institutional tableau: attendants flanking a bed or bier, a large shadow thrown on the wall.
39Greystone
A grotesque long-nosed clerk in profile holding a small white card.
40Reading the Discharge
A man hunched typing at a desk by a window, the city beyond going dark.
41Into the Dark
A writer at a typewriter watched by five looming pale-yellow figures.
42They Stood Behind Him While He Typed
A figure typing on a bare yellow plain, a row of small watching figures behind him.
43For the Witnesses
A red-suited figure at an upright piano, the face scribbled out in yellow.
44He Played With No Face
Two silhouettes at a small table beneath a yellow sun or moon over water.
45Dinner at Rockland
Three figures at a white-clothed table in an ochre room.
46Visiting Day
Two figures with paper-bag faces seated together by the sea.
47Two Paper Faces
Two figures in a field, one wearing a drawn paper-bag face, the other blank.
48He Wore a Paper Face
Two figures pressed close, a single band binding and blinding both their eyes.
49The Same Blindfold
Two figures merging, a blank domino-card face and a dark-haired one leaning in to nuzzle.
50I Was Looking For You
Two hatted figures sharing a single coat, a small ship on the water behind them.
51Two of Us, One Coat
Two men in hats with glowing yellow faces standing in a yellow field.
52Two of Us in Rockland
A seated man whose head has become a cloud of blazing yellow light.
53His Head Was Full of Light

IVHolythe cry and the blaze — the last unmanaged thing

A golden-masked figure raised at an ornate pulpit beneath a blue sky.
54Holy the Mask
A black skeletal figure with a small crowned head on a flat brilliant-yellow ground.
55Holy the Stitched Mouth
A bald, yellow-faced man, mouth torn wide open in a scream, against blue.
56He Finally Said It
A bowler-hatted figure standing among pale headstones.
57Over the Graves
A profile whose head is a burning bowl, a yellow brush-flame rising against blue.
58The Burning Bowl
A top-hatted figure with a blank face, light pouring from an open mouth.
59The Mouth Full of Light
A seated figure in a yellow tie, the head a guttering smear of light going dark.
60The Light Went Out of Him