I am a sucker for Paul Newman and it was an image of him in Cool Hand Luke that drew me in while browsing Ruby Art yesterday.  I soon found out that Dennis Hopper spent his early years as a photographer and inadvertent chronicler of the sixties.  His stunning photographic archive was just published in a book for the first time.  If it wasn’t for the $1500 price tag, or the fact that it is already SOLD OUT, I would be adding this to my collection soon!  The good news is that you can leaf through the entire book here.

Hoppers first pictures were street scenes in New York, where he moved to study acting at Lee Strasberg’s method school. The turn of the 1960s was an explosive time for the arts – pop music, pop art, wayward graphics, post-studio cinema, photo-realist reportage, the rise of the art super-dealer like Robert Fraser in London and Henry Geldzahler in Manhattan. Hopper lapped up all the new influences around him. He was, reputedly, the first person ever to buy a Warhol soup can (for $75). He became a self-confessed “gallery bum”. And his photographs began to reflect two things he had discovered: the texture of the ordinary, and the attractions of fame.  Get more info about his past and evolution in photography at The Indepenent.

Filed under: art