News — photography

Dennis Hopper, the Man Behind the Lens Most people know Dennis Hopper as the wild-eyed actor of Easy Rider and Blue Velvet. Fewer know that for a stretch in the 1960s he was one of the sharpest observers of American culture with a camera in his hands. The story goes that his first wife, Brooke Hayward, gave him a Nikon in 1961. He took to it immediately, and for the next several years he carried it everywhere, shooting without any particular plan beyond curiosity. He was in the middle of a remarkable moment, and he had the access to prove...

Throughout her brief career, Francesca Woodman’s artistic output functioned as an inward-facing investigation, transforming her own persona into the central, spectral figure of her work. Photography served as an instrument for psychological excavation; she occupied the dual roles of subject and lens, haunting the private spaces she inhabited. With a maturity that transcended her years, she navigated complex inquiries into bodily existence, gender identity, and human finitude, driven by a profound, almost moth-like compulsion toward her own vulnerability. Her images operate through a striking dualism. Frequently depicted as a fading apparition amidst crumbling interior spaces, Woodman might be found wedged...