After losing himself in Taos, New Mexico, for 15 years, Dennis Hopper returned to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. In 1987, Hopper began to use a Polaroid camera to document gang graffiti. He was particularly drawn to the abstract shapes of overlapping paint that appeared when graffiti had been covered up or written over, reminding him, he said, “that art is everywhere in every corner that you choose to frame and not just ignore and walk by.”
