Dennis Hopper is a phenomenal photographer. I've seen his black and white work before and had forgotten how much I love everything about it. This is one I don't remember having seen before. I'm using it because it so well illustrates how I felt tonight at the opening party for the MOCA show of his work. (Little bit of a headache, girly in my blue eyeshadow and slightly weird outfit. I should have, perhaps, drawn on a sloppy mustachio.) What I did not know before tonight is that he was also a really skilled painter and that he made some recent photographs that are completely different and amazing. There was a series in color that are all very motion blurred and abstract and saturated color and a few others that were not blurred at all but reminded me a bit of my own photos. They were of things like cement and seemed to be all about the colors and textures. I always liked him for no reason in particular. He seemed like a "character" and that's good enough for me. Now I like him even more and feel like I should have known him.