HIPPIE DAYS 1966 — 1968

July 3, 1966. Freshly arrived from his Parisian suburbs, the young Alain Dister settles down on a New York sidewalk at the corner of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, to try to negotiate a few drawings. In his bag a Canon FP camera and three lenses. The beginnings are tough. Shabby furnishings, fleeting loves. But the little Frenchie is only 24 years old, the era still allows one to survive on the margins and the real journey does not take long to begin. A trip à la Kerouac: Route 66 in a scarlet red Pontiac convertible to deliver West Coast. The journey will be of no return, in a way. One way. As soon as he arrives in Los Angeles, the apprentice photographer gets incredible meetings with stars who are also beginners: the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, Frank Zappa… Waooooh! California has just entered into effervescence. The epicenter of the phenomenon is located in the north in old Frisco, at the precise intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets, which see increasingly rich and colorful flows of teenagers breaking away, draft dodgers (deserters from the conscription for Vietnam), real or fake beat poets converge: flower necklaces, bare feet, marijuana fumes. We live at ground level, sitting on the grass in Golden Gate Park or in one of the communities that are sprouting up on the hills, in crash pads made of brightly painted planks. The following year the “Movement” is at its peak: Summer of Love. A golden age of music, which interweaves its ragas with the powerful riffs of the brilliant guitars of Hendrix, Clapton, Jerry Garcia… Everything is shared, food, bodies, little magic pills, and a few adventitious germs… which we will treat at the Free Clinic.

Alain Dister lives greedily this precious moment, which he senses is fleeting. Simultaneously inside and outside, he triggers or… forgets to trigger, either because he is too high up, or because he is too poor and the film is missing. He notes, he sketches, in small sewn oilcloth notebooks. He collects memories, concert flyers, scribbled addresses, road maps, fleeting portraits. With immense tenderness, and always the critical, “documentary” distance. He leaves, comes back, for three years, his eternal satchel on his shoulder, surveying the golden triangle Paris-New York-San Francisco.

From this founding journey, which would make him an icon of the nascent rock critic (even in France where academic culture shunned him…), he would keep solid friendships, for example meeting in Rome a now consecrated Frank Zappa. His gaze alert to emergences. Careful not to give in to nostalgia. Working on the graphics of black and white, the material, the color, the frame. Always at a distance, always free, always fraternal. Without a real career plan. Along the way, his eyes wide open.

Marie Hélène Fraïssé, journalist, writer, radio producer.
President of the Association dedicated to the work of Alain Dister, whose companion she was for twenty years.