“Double Standard” is probably the best known of the eighteen thousand images that Hopper created with his Nikon from 1961 to around the time he began shooting “Easy Rider,” in early 1968, which happens to be when his and Hayward’s combustible marriage finally blew up
“In Dreams” is an exhibition of works at Fahey/Klein Gallery that connect Dennis Hopper’s role as an actor, husband, father and photographer. Our exhibition in conjunction with the newly published book of the same name (by Damiani Publications) affirms the restless energy and curiosity of Hopper’s eye, as well as his unique place in the culture of 1960s America.
Dennis Hopper’s photography archive—the Hopper Art Trust—resides in an office on the top floor of a squat building on the Sunset Strip, in Los Angeles. Its neighbors are insurance and mortgage offices, and for the most part it shares their appearance: filing cabinets here, a desk there, a wall of bookshelves with plastic binders. The binders are filled with contact sheets containing upward of eighteen thousand images that Hopper created with his Nikon F camera between 1961 and 1967, when he was just another actor with a stalled-out career, in the years leading up to “Easy Rider,” which he starred in and directed. That movie, released in 1969, would make him something more than a Hollywood star; for a time, he was a pop-culture deity. And, for whatever reason, it also turned him into a former photographer. With a few exceptions (including an ill-advised Hustler shoot, in the eighties), Hopper rarely picked up a camera again for the rest of his life.
“The Lost Album,” a series of photographs first seen last year in Berlin, will be opening at London’s Royal Academy next summer. An exhibition of over 400 photographs taht were only discovered after his death in 2010, the series features portraits of iconic artists and actors from Rauschenberg and Warhol to Paul Newman.
The collection of four hundred vintage prints from the 1960s — taken by Dennis Hopper and recently rediscovered — documents the social, political, and creative highlights from a tumultuous era.
Sean O’Hagan: Those who accuse Hopper of being an amateur snapper miss the point: the photographs that will go on show at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art are an inspired blend of Hollywood gloss and the miraculous everyday
Those who accuse Hopper of being an amateur snapper miss the point: the photographs that will go on show at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art are an inspired blend of Hollywood gloss and the miraculous everyday
