Satanists, Surfers, Hippies and Radicals: Dennis Stock’s California Trip

The new Dennis Stock Magnum Editions Posters collection is available now. The curation features ten iconic images — including a number from this article alongside his famed portraits of stars like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Audrey Hepburn. These images will never be available in this size and price again. You can explore the collection here.

The lead image in this article (above) is now available – for the first time ever – as a limited edition 8×10″ Magnum stamped print. You can see all images available in this selection— the first collection of Magnum Editions— and learn more about the 8X10″ prints here, on the Magnum Shop.

“There is no question that the Americans are vagabonds,” said Dennis Stock, “Our highway system and size makes it very attractive to ‘truck on down’.” He was speaking in reference to Road People, a 1971 documentary photography project focused on hitchhikers and other people he came across on the United States’ famous open roads, but he revealed something of his own wanderlust when he went on to say, “Many of us take to the road in motorhomes, trailers, on motorcycles or by hitchhiking. This itch to see ‘what is over the hill’ is something that I can easily relate to as a photographer.”

Stock’s own restlessness drew him to the highways in the 1960s, when he drove through California, taking in the unique, heady spirit of the place, and photographing the curious characters he met along the way, from cult leaders, to hippies, off-duty actors, nudists and countless other free spirits that are drawn to the state.

Here, we present Dennis Stock’s California photographs alongside his own text on the west coast state, taken from his 1970 book, California Trip.

California Trip was reissued in 2019 by Anthology Editions.

Fifteen years since my first trip West, I have some new thoughts about gloryville. 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 freewheelin potpourri of search that the momentary ensembles in space spring, presenting to the photographer his surrealistic image.