This long-overdue monograph presents an astonishing panorama of a bygone Los Angeles from photographer Julian Wasser. Some of the images are very well known--Joan Didion leaning against a Corvette Stingray in Hollywood, 1968; Marcel Duchamp playing chess at his seminal 1963 Pasadena exhibition--while many others, such as Barbara Hershey and David Carradine in bed in their Laurel Canyon house, Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston at Jack’s Mulholland Drive home, or the Fonda family lined up on the family sofa, paint a picture of a very private Hollywood of the 1960s and 70s, when privacy was possible and celebrity culture had not yet completely consumed the country. Mingled with these iconic faces are pictures of California counterculture such as the Hog Farm Commune in Sunland; surfers in Malibu Beach; musicians such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Frank Zappa, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell and Elton John, documentation of events such as Robert Kennedy’s campaign and the Watts riots; shots of Clint Eastwood on the set of Magnum Force, George and Marci Lucas with Martin Scorcese and Roman Polanski at Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive after the murder of Sharon Tate in 1969. Julian Wasser started his career in photography as a copy boy in the Washington, DC bureau of the Associated Press. He was a contract photographer for Time magazine for many years, and his photographs have also appeared in (and on the covers of) Life, Newsweek, People, Vanity Fair, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Oggi, Hello, Playboy, Elle, Vogue and GQ.
Featured photograph of Joan Didion and her Stingray, photographed for Time Magazine, is reproduced from The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Details
THE WAY WE WERE, the first major monograph of Wasser's work, is a perfect time capsule spanning sixties, seventies, and eighties Los Angeles, with iconic shots (Joan Didion leaning against a Stingray) and unearthed gems (Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson horsing around at his house on Mulholland Drive).
Paper Magazine
Mickey Boardman
Mr. Mickey's look of the month comes from The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser (Damiani).
Architectural Digest
Rebecca Bates
In the introduction to his new monograph, The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser (Damiani, $60), he writes, “The glamour of Old Hollywood was still intact, but at the same time, everyone was approachable. There were no reserved VIP areas in clubs, no bodyguards or security men, no hordes of paparazzi.” With his Nikon in tow, Wasser was given unprecedented access to actors, musicians, politicians, and writers—everyone from fresh-faced, teenage Jodie Foster to silver-screen heavyweights like Steve McQueen and Jack Nicholson. Looking through these collected images, we see not only a more relaxed Hollywood, but also America during a dramatic cultural and political transition.
W Magazine
Dana Goodyear
The Sunset Strip, 1964: Julian Wasser, a young photographer on assignment for Life magazine, brings Zubin Mehta, the director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, to the Whisky à Go-Go, a brand-new nightclub. “I thought he’d get a kick out of it,” Wasser said recently, flipping through a box of old prints in his apartment in West L.A. “He hated it: ‘Ach, my ears.’?” Wasser, on the other hand, was the proverbial pig in mud. Everywhere he looked there were stars, unguarded and un-self-conscious, enjoying a golden moment in a golden town. Wasser snapped a picture of the actress Jayne Mansfield in a tight spaghetti-strap dress doing the Jerk with a civilian in a blazer. “His father was a billionaire who owned cemeteries in Florida,” Wasser confided. The photograph is featured in The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser (Damiani), a collection of Wasser’s Hollywood candids, which just came out. Three years after the picture was taken, Mansfield was killed in a car accident in Louisiana. Wasser still sees the cemetery heir in the lobbies of five-star Paris hotels during Fashion Week.
The New York Times
Rebecca Bengal
"The Way We Were"(Damiani Books, $60), the first monograph by the photographer Julian Wasser, captures the heyday of celebrity and counterculture in Los Angeles...The effect of so many behind-the-scenes pictures plays out like a kind of movie in itself.
Featured image—of Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston, photographed at Nicholson's home on Mulholland Drive for a 1971 issue of Stern magazine—is reproduced from The Way We Were: The Photography of Julian Wasser, published by Damiani. Advance copies of the book are available at our booth at Paris Photo Los Angeles. In the book, Wasser writes about the period post-1964, "Whether shooting the beautiful people or social documentary my intent as a photographer never changed: to be where things were happening, to meet the people who were responsible for the world we live in, and through my pictures, to evoke in viewers what I saw and felt at the instant I tripped the shutters."
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In the current issue of American Vogue, Abby Aguirre contributes an interview with Joan Didion and Julian Wasser on his portraits of Didion for Time magazine in 1968—which can be found in Wasser's first monograph, The Way We Were, just published by Damiani. Of this photograph of the author and her daughter Quintana Roo, Didion says, "The picture with the baby—I would say that was my favorite picture ever. Julian took beautiful pictures. Anybody who had their picture taken by Julian felt blessed." When asked how she felt about the article in Time, Didion said, "I don’t remember the article. I remember the pictures." continue to blog
Prepare to be blown away! This Thursday, May 8 through Monday, May 12, ARTBOOK and Koenig Books (Europe's leading specialist art bookstore) team up at Frieze New York to present the city's deepest, most exciting art bookstore ever. Featuring more than 1500 titles from around the world, as well as a large selection of limited editions and rare and out of print titles—including one complete edition of the legendary Mönchengladbach Box Set and Cahiers d'Arts' 33 volume Picasso Catalogue Raisonné, the store is located near the Southern entrance to the fair, beside the VIP lounge. Scroll down for more information about our rare editions, as well as book signings in our booth! continue to blog
ARTBOOK invites you to visit our bookstore at PARIS PHOTO LOS ANGELES, Paramount Pictures Studios, from April 24-27 on the New York City Backlot, Booth C6. Our booth features hundreds of titles from the world's top photo book publishers, including Hatje Cantz, MoMA, Radius Books, Daylight, Editions Xavier Barral, RM, The Iceplant, Damiani, Yale University Press, Twin Palms, Nazraeli Press, Prestel and Phaidon. In addition there will be a large selection of limited editions, rare, signed, and out-of-print titles, plus book signings every day! continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 176 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $79 ISBN: 9788862083492 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 5/31/2014 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani. Edited by Brad Elterman. Text by Julian Wasser.
This long-overdue monograph presents an astonishing panorama of a bygone Los Angeles from photographer Julian Wasser. Some of the images are very well known--Joan Didion leaning against a Corvette Stingray in Hollywood, 1968; Marcel Duchamp playing chess at his seminal 1963 Pasadena exhibition--while many others, such as Barbara Hershey and David Carradine in bed in their Laurel Canyon house, Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston at Jack’s Mulholland Drive home, or the Fonda family lined up on the family sofa, paint a picture of a very private Hollywood of the 1960s and 70s, when privacy was possible and celebrity culture had not yet completely consumed the country. Mingled with these iconic faces are pictures of California counterculture such as the Hog Farm Commune in Sunland; surfers in Malibu Beach; musicians such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Frank Zappa, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell and Elton John, documentation of events such as Robert Kennedy’s campaign and the Watts riots; shots of Clint Eastwood on the set of Magnum Force, George and Marci Lucas with Martin Scorcese and Roman Polanski at Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive after the murder of Sharon Tate in 1969.
Julian Wasser started his career in photography as a copy boy in the Washington, DC bureau of the Associated Press. He was a contract photographer for Time magazine for many years, and his photographs have also appeared in (and on the covers of) Life, Newsweek, People, Vanity Fair, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Oggi, Hello, Playboy, Elle, Vogue and GQ.
