Topic: Dennis Hopper - The Lost Album

[Late Developer]

Lara and I visited the exhibition today and we enjoyed it.

It actually brought home to me that, in my experience, there are two types of exhibition; firstly the inspirational and secondly, and no less important, the interesting. This was the latter. Without wishing to appear glib or dismissive, anyone with a reasonable grasp of how to use a camera could have taken those photos.

Aside from a few of his later works, the rest were, in my opinion, good quality snapshots.  They made me interested in him and the culture of his age but there was no "wow factor" compared with many other exhibitions we've attended. What struck me as very odd is that he picked up a camera in 1961, took about 18,000 photos and then, in 1967 he put the camera down and never picked it up again.

All his photos were shot on Tri-X and, therefore, B&W. There were a few which included some stars and various talented people of the day - and also Andy Warhol and David Hockney.

It's very well worth seeing.  There's a lot of it and you can watch Easy Rider or The Last Movie (both rated 18).
 

[original_ann]

That must have been a dream exhibit, Paul! 

[gsgary]

This is the only thing I like about London all the wonderful exhibitions you get to see it makes me want to jump on a train one day for a meet up

[Late Developer]

@Original Ann - it was really good but very different to what we were expecting.  Most of the exhibitions we see tend to be very high quality photos and equally high production values - i.e. photos that tend to inspire you to want to go and see where they were taken / try to emulate yourself. This was a refreshing change as the photos were mostly 6x9 prints from 35mm film.  The processing and printing was, in a lot of cases, not what you'd expect from a professional photographer. But then, Dennis Hopper wasn't a professional photographer. He was an actor and director, painter, abstract expressionist and a "Hippie". The photos were a fantastic record of 7 years of his life between 1961 and 1967 -a time of great change in the world and, in particular, in the USA. If the exhibition hasn't already made an appearance in USA, I would recommend it, if it's reachable.

@gsgary - do it.  Always happy to meet up for anything photo-related and beer. A great combo.  I'd like to get "up north" more but, sadly, most of the top exhibitions tend to be centred in / around London.

[moominsean]

I have two Dennis Hopper photo books and I quite like them. I do agree that his best work is street photography and his "famous people" stuff. Funnily, what tries to get pushed off as "artistic" is his worst work, the close up shots of textures, posters, and abstract stuff, all fairly mundane with a student like quality. I think he was very good at photography, really, but a lot of archivers seem to reach a bit concerning what is really worth seeing/showing. It probably helps that he was an interesting cat who lead an interesting life, as well. He was quite good as a documentary photographer, and many of his photos "work".

The story of how the negatives were saved is pretty cool... Crazy drug addled machine gun desert stuff.