Culture & Religion — February 20, 2011

Dennis Hopper’s Photo Archive

When the actor and director Dennis Hopper died last year, it sparked renewed interest in his ‘other’ career—a chronicler of Sixties America with a stunning collection of photographs.

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The film critic Matthew Hays wrote of him: “No other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the Sixties than that of Dennis Hopper”. Note the word “persona”—as if the real Hopper lay forever hidden behind the image he projected, of the scary, wild-eyed, chemically enhanced, crazily enthusiastic combination of hippy visionary and serious artist. He was born in Kansas but his parents relocated to San Diego in 1949 when he was 13. California clearly suited him. In his high-school graduate class of 1954, he was voted the Boy Most Likely To Succeed. He didn’t waste much time.

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