"I was a compulsive shooter back then. I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people."
"I had been taking photographs because I hoped to be able to direct movies. That’s why I never cropped any of the photographs; they are all full-frame."
"They cost me money but kept me alive."
"I was doing something that I thought could have some impact someday. In many ways, it’s really these photographs that kept me going creatively."
"I started out shooting flat, on walls, so that it had no depth of field, because I was being photographed all the time as an actor. And if you notice, there aren’t a lot of photographs of actors — Dean Stockwell, Paul Newman. I thought I was an imposition to the actors who were being photographed all the time. I really wanted the flat-on-painter kind of surface. I did that for a long time. Then the artists. I really started taking photographs of artists. They wanted me to take photographs. They wanted posters and things. I was hanging out with them. I photographed the ones I thought were going to make it. I wasn’t really working as an actor during this period, and I thought, well, if I’m not going to be able to work as an actor, I might as well be able make something that’s going to be credible. So I took photographs of Martin Luther King and Selma, Montgomery, as history, and selecting artists that I thought would make it. I met most of the Pop artists before they ever had shows."
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PHOTO GALLERY
© Dennis Hopper
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DENNIS HOPPER DOCUMENTARY
Moving Pictures (1994)
Documentary profile of Dennis Hopper, includes movie clips, photographs and interviews with colleagues
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