El Arbolito Park, Quito, Ecuador, 2002 © Hiroshi Watanabe

I go to places that captivate and intrigue me. I am interested in what humans do. I seek to capture people, traditions, and locales that first and foremost are of personal interest. I immerse myself with information on the places prior to leaving, but I try to avoid firm, preconceived ideas. I strive for both calculation and discovery in my work, keeping my mind open for surprises. At times, I envision images I’d like to capture, but when I actually look through the viewfinder, my mind goes blank and I photograph whatever catches my eye. Photographs I return with are usually different from my original concepts. My photographs reflect both genuine interest in my subject as well as a respect for the element of serendipity, while other times I seek pure beauty. The pure enjoyment of this process drives and inspires me. I believe there’s a thread that connects all of my work — my personal vision of the world as a whole. I make every effort to be a faithful visual recorder of the world around me, a world in flux that, at very least in my mind, deserves preservation.

Artist’s statement, Hiroshi Watanabe

Music Notes, Nakatsugawa, Japan, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

White Terns, Midway Atoll, 2000 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Whales Eye, Anaheim, CA, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Bora Bora, Tahiti, 1997 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Mandalay, Burma, 2000 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Santa Monica Pier, 2000 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Battery Park, New York, 2000 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Liberty State Park, New Jersey, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Tsutenkaku, Osaka, Japan, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Salmon Heads, Sapporo, Japan, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

International Fountain, Seattle, 2000 © Hiroshi Watanabe

China Town, Portland, Oregon, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Standing Woman, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Kabukiza, Tokyo, Japan, 2004 © Hiroshi Watanabe

Paul Newman, 1964 © Dennis Hopper

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.

-Dennis Hopper

Paris Woman, 1994 © Dennis Hopper

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.

-Dennis Hopper

Jane Fonda, 1967 © Dennis Hopper

Like all artists I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.

-Dennis Hopper

Bill Cosby (Chateau Marmont), 1965 © Dennis Hopper

… but I was trying to go another way from the movie business. And I was taking pictures in black-and-white. Everyone else was using color. I was using Tri-X because I could shoot at night, and get shots by holding it real still, with just streetlights and so on. So these were things that I was playing with. But at the same time, a lot of my ideas were glamour ideas, because I wanted people to look good. So my portraits were about them in natural light, looking good, and looking in some way that had something to do with the reality of their world.

-Dennis Hopper

Jefferson Airplane, 1965 © Dennis Hopper

There are moments that I`ve had some real brilliance, you know. But I think they are moments. And sometimes, in a career, moments are enough. I never felt I played the great part. I never felt that I directed the great movie. And I can`t say that it`s anybody`s fault but my own.

-Dennis Hopper

Robert Rauschenberg, 1966 © Dennis Hopper

You know, the history of California art doesn’t start until about 1961, and that’s when these photographs start. I mean, we have no history out here.

-Dennis Hopper

Brian Jones, 1965 © Dennis Hopper

Most of the guys who were heavy on drugs and stuff — the rockers, and all that — we’re all out playing golf and we’re all sober. It is weird.

-Dennis Hopper

Tuesday Weld, 1965 © Dennis Hopper

The high points have not been that many, but I’m a compulsive creator so I don’t think of the children first, I think of the work. Let’s see, I guess, Easy Rider, Blue Velvet, a couple of photographs here, a couple of paintings . . . those are the things that I would be proud of and yet they ’re so minimal in this vast body of crap — most of the 150 films I’ve been in — this river of shit that I’ve tried to make gold out of. Very honestly.

-Dennis Hopper

Jean Tinguely, 1963 © Dennis Hopper

Then I had Easy Rider, and I couldn’t get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn’t take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again, and then I went digital.

-Dennis Hopper

Biker Couple, 1961 © Dennis Hopper

I’d love to be in a Coen Brothers film, or something by Curtis Hanson — did you see 8 Mile? a terrific little movie — but I’ve never worked for Lucas or Spielberg. You could name most of the directors in Hollywood I’ve never worked for. I am not offered any of the roles that Jack Nicholson gets or Warren Beatty gets, or any of these people get, and never have been and never will. So when you ask me about playing villains and would I like to play other things, I think, God, I’m just lucky if I get a villain part every once in a while.

-Dennis Hopper

Biker, 1961 © Dennis Hopper

I think of that with my photographs. I think of them as ‘found’ paintings because I don’t crop them, I don’t manipulate them or anything. So they’re like ‘found’ objects to me.

-Dennis Hopper

Bruce Conner (in tub), Toni Basil, Teri Garr and Ann Marshall, 1964 © Dennis Hopper

When it first started, it was inferior and the inks weren’t archival. As soon as the inks became archival, I went digital. To me, it’s like the difference between developing something in chemical or being able to spray the light. It’s like painting with light, and the computer is reading the light. When a digital photograph looks right, it looks like it was painted.

-Dennis Hopper

Claes Oldenburg (Portrait with Cake Slices), 1965 © Dennis Hopper

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 [in the show] 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.

-Dennis Hopper

Andy Warhol and members of the Factory (Gregory Markopoulos, Taylor Mead, Gerard Malanga & Jack Smith), 1963 © Dennis Hopper

I didn’t use a light meter; I just read the light off my hands. So the light varies, and there are some dark images. Also, I’m sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in those proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It’s not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.

-Dennis Hopper

Ed Ruscha, 1964 © Dennis Hopper

Well, I was a compulsive creator, so it became my creative outlet. I was using Tri-X film — which nobody else was using at the time — because I wanted to get as much natural light as possible and be able to shoot everything in natural light without flashes. I was a product of the movie business …

-Dennis Hopper

Irving Blum and Peggy Moffitt, 1964 © Dennis Hopper

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.

-Dennis Hopper

Self-portrait at porn stand, 1962, © Dennis Hopper

I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It’s not been a bad life.

-Dennis Hopper

I asked him about this iconic photo which has always been one of the great hardcore album covers and posters. He said he took this shot handheld at night outside of a show in LA, using only the light from a hot dog vendor cart. He never uses a light meter, has never used one and has such a refined eye that he can judge the light and get the exposure right every time. Even in the studio.

Check out his work and buy his book.

Bad_Religion_'80-'85 © Ed Colver

It was only at the end of the day when we moved to the street and I shot on the street with natural light that things began to groove. Being on my feet, moving fast with little gear is my comfort zone. It was a good time and shooting that luscious Fuji NPZ 800 pulled a stop and a half is always a joy.

That alley is the last great urban alley in downtown Los Angeles and it has been featured in hundreds of shows and films. I’ve shot there numerous times but this day, there was literally shit on the brick walls. Who takes time to smear their shit on a wall? The stench was powerful. Jon T. was a trooper for taking it as my assistant refused to even step off the sidewalk to enter the alley.

Jon T. Howard, shot with a Mamiya Pro II, 85mm lens, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim

Jon T. Howard, shot with a Leica M6 TTL 0.58, 35mm summicron, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim

Jon T. Howard, shot with a Mamiya Pro II, 85mm lens, Fuji NPZ 800 © Doug Kim

And plus I knew Nicky Katt’s work. It was only after recently talking to a friend about him that I realized Nicky is a cinemaphile’s actor. You really have to be a nerd about American cinema to know who he is. I know that he’s been on TV but I’ve always known him for his small but memorable roles in independent films. Think about it. You might know him as:

• the smart ass hit man in The Limey
• the Nazi in a 50s greaser uniform in Dazed and Confused
• the guy with the tongue boil in Planet Terror
• one of them cops in Insomnia
• the rocker dude in the van in School of Rock
• the tough in the bar inSecondhand Lions
• the cynical tough in SubUria

I showed up at the house on Fairfax and we got along instantly because we somehow started chatting about Monte Hellman films. It turns out Nicky was collaborating with Monte on a screenplay. Much to the annoyance of the writer, we wouldn’t stop talking about Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter.

The challenge for this shoot was the fact that Nicky was obsessed with Sam Peckinpah and recently saw this interview with him where he wore his sunglasses the entire time. So I sat Nicky in this big chair by the fireplace with the dog and his sunglasses and his glass of bourbon and I started taking meter readings. The room was so dark that I had to push my meager 400 speed film to 1600 just to shoot wide open. I couldn’t even focus as the viewfinder for the Mamiya is pretty dark. I literally had to lock in on the wall of the fireplace behind him and walk my camera backwards to put him in the focal plane.

After suffering some anxiety about pushing my film three stops and my inability to focus, I picked up my film a couple of days later from the lab and it all turned out fine. Not stellar images but I really enjoyed that afternoon.

Nicky Katt, shot with a Mamiya Pro II, 85mm, Agfa APX 400, for Metro.Pop Magazine © Doug Kim

Nicky Katt, shot with a Leica M6 TTL 0.58, 50mm summicron, Agfa APX 400, for Metro.Pop Magazine © Doug Kim

Nicky Katt, shot with a Leica M6 TTL 0.58, 50mm summicron, Agfa APX 400, for Metro.Pop Magazine © Doug Kim

Balance is the gift of the Creator.

-B.K.S. Iyengar

Alexandra, 31 mos., Virabhadrasana III “Warrior III Pose" © Doug Kim

Perhaps my favorite image in my book Born Yogis is this one of Alexandra, a firecracker of a girl. I was at her home in Point Mugu, north of Los Angeles, getting to know her, warming up and playing around with her. Many times the greatest comfort zone for babies or toddlers is their parents bed so we went there, the light was good so I encouraged her to play around.

She began jumping around on the bed with little encouragement. We were laughing and both taking turns bouncing around. And then that was it, the window closed, her time performing and playing with me was finished. Shooting babies and kids is the greatest lesson in taking only what is given.

A couple of days later, looking at the contact sheet, this image popped. The fraction of a second, catching Alexandra in that perfect moment of grace and balance, joy in her face, play in her body, hands ready for flight, that moment of pure magic, filling the room with light.

I absolutely love this image. Still.

Alexandra continues to be a firecracker and lives in France now with her family.

Shot with a Nikon F5, Agfa APX 400, 28-70mm Nikkor.

A traditional Jewish ceremony and a warehouse party / reception the following night with circus performers, contortionists, a fire dancing team, Regaton beats by the groom, a Brazilian band, a ceremony with an African priestess, acrobats swinging from the ceiling and more and more and more.

If you think you’ve been to a cool wedding, trust me; you haven’t, unless  you were at Helene and Preston’s (or at Aaliyah and Patrick’s).

Good stuff.

Nikon F5, 28-70mm, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim

Helene, Nikon F5, 85mm, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim

Helene & Preston at the Pearl, Nikon F5, 85mm, Kodak Tri-X © Doug Kim

Ilya & Dave, Nikon D300, 28-70mm © Doug Kim

Nikon D300, 28-70mm © Doug Kim

Everyone was worried about her hair...well except the guys; Nikon D300, 12-24mm © Doug Kim

Nikon D300, 28-70mm © Doug Kim

To view more images, click here.

Shot for National Lampoon. I do not remember the significance of the white wicker elephant but this guy had a nice layback air.

Pedlow Skatepark, Encino © Doug Kim