Irving Blum and Peggy Moffitt, 1964
Like director Stanley Kubrick, the late actor and director Dennis Hopper possessed a love of photography.
While he was better known for his iconic roles in films like Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now, Hopper was a passionate street photographer during the 1960s, a tumultuous decade marked by social and political upheaval.
His images capture the shifting cultural landscape and countercultures around him, from Hell’s Angels and hippies, to the Civil Rights Movement and scenes of gritty street life in Harlem.
“I never made a cent from these photos. They cost me money but kept me alive. I started at eighteen taking pictures. I stopped at thirty-one. These represent the years from twenty-five to thirty-one, 1961 to 1967. I didn’t crop my photos. They are full frame natural light Tri-X. I went under contract to Warner Brothers at eighteen. I directed Easy Rider at thirty-one. I married Brooke at twenty-five and got a good camera and could afford to take pictures and print them. They were the only creative outlet I had for these years until Easy Rider. I never carried a camera again.”
Hopper’s images are now on exhibit at The Royal Academy of Arts as part of ‘Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album’, a collection spanning over 400 photographs, including those of his fellow actors and figures like Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp.
View some images below, and if you’re in London, do check out the exhibition which runs til 19 October 2014.
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1965
Double Standard, 1961
Paul Newman, 1964
Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, David Hockney and Jeff Goodman, 1963
Robert Rauschenberg, 1966
[via Laughing Squid, We Made This and Coudal Partners, images by Dennis Hopper courtesy The Dennis Hopper Art Trust]