Walter Hopps, the curator of Duchamp’s landmark retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, helped direct this shot by setting up the chess board in front of the artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelor, Even (1915-1923). Writer Eve Babitz was having an affair with Walter Hopp’s at the time.
Julian Wasser started his career in photography in the Washington DC bureau of the Associated Press. While at Associated Press he met Weegee and rode with the famous news photographer as he shot photos of crime scenes in Washington. Weegee was a major influence on Wasser’s style of photography. After serving in the Navy in San Diego the former AP copyboy became a contract photographer for Time Magazine in Los Angeles doing assignments for Time, Life, and Fortune. His photographs have appeared in and been used as covers of Time, Newsweek, and People magazines in the United States.
He has done cover assignments for The Sunday Telegraph, and The Sunday Times colour supplements in London. His photos have appeared in US Magazine, Vanity Fair, TV Guide, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Oggi, Hello, Playboy, Elle, Vogue, and GQ and in exhibitions in galleries and museums.
His photographs of Los Angeles life can be seen in his new book The Way We Were published by D.A.P. Damiani.
