DENNIS STOCK – CALIFORNIA TRIP
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Dennis Stock took a five-week road trip along the California highways in 1968, documenting the golden state at a time of social turmoil and flux. Dennis stock free-flowing approach to photography allowed the contradictions of the time to speak for themselves. There are images of sun-kissed, back-to-nature hippy couples and marching black militants, missile bases and utopian communes, endless Californian beaches and a towering stack of rusting cars in a scrapyard. These black and white photos were compiled to create the photobook California Trip, originally published in 1970, the publication became an emblem of how the idealism of the 60s counter culture peaked and faded. In Dinnis Stock own words. “Every idea that Western man explores in his pursuit of the best of all possible worlds will be searched at the head lab -California. Technological and spiritual quests vibrate throughout the state, intermingling, often creating the ethereal. It is from this freewheeling potpourri of search that the momentary ensembles in space spring, presenting to the photographer his surrealistic image. However, to the Californians it is all so ordinary, almost mundane. The sensibility of these conditioned victims is where it is all at, right, left, up and down. Our future is being determined in the lab out West. There, a recent trip blew my mind across this state of being, as I collected images along the way to remember the transient quality of the Big Trip.” Previously Dennis Stock’s career was defined by his work with cultural icons, including James Dean, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Louis Armstrong… and major magazines, such as Time and LIFE. In print for the first time since its 1970 publication, California Trip is a faithful reproduction of Stock’s timeless work. The book had become a collectors’ item, and its reissue at an affordable price makes it available to a wider audience The spreads reproduced here belong to the original 1970 edition. |
