Julian Wasser

This long overdue monograph presents an astonishing collection of images by Los Angeles photographer Julian Wasser. Some are very well known such as an iconic Joan Didion leaning against a Corvette Stingray in Hollywood 1968 and Marcel Duchamp playing chess at his seminal 1963 Pasadena exhibition. But many such as Barbara Hershey and David Carrodine in bed in their Laurel Canyon house (1972), or Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston at Jack's Mulholland Drive house (1974) start to paint a picture of a very private Hollywood of the 60s and 70s when privacy was possible and celebrity culture had not yet consumed society. Mixed in with the iconic faces are pictures of California counterculture such as the Hog Farm Commune in Sunland (1968) music starts such as Crosby Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell and Elton John, and a haunting picture of Roman Polanski at his house on Cielo Drive after the murder of Sharon Tate (1969).