After Easy Rider: late-60s love seen through Dennis Hopper's disposables

Dennis Hopper is remembered for his achingly cool place in the history of American cinema, most of all his role as a freewheeling biker in Peter Fonda’s psychedelic paean to the wide American road, Easy Rider. He is perhaps lesser known as a documentarian of 60s and 70s culture, but last year an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London brought together over 400 photographs capturing everything and everyone from the streets of Harlem to fellow actor Paul Newman.

Now, some of his most diaristic pictures have been compiled into a new book, Drugstore Camera. Shot in New Mexico following the production of Easy Rider, the photographs taken with disposable cameras and developed in local pharmacies feel like outtakes from the landmark film. Hopper’s washed-out disposables are little snapshots of the height of hippiedom. Amidst the fringed suede and the road trips through the vast desert landscape, they offer a personal perspective on the American West as the climax of 60s gave way to the early 70s.