This work represents people who self-identify as 21st century hippies. This was my sole criterion for selecting subjects. Several people I met and photographed do not visually reveal themselves as counter-cultural hippies in any noticeable way. But all of them are able to articulate their connections to the lifestyle, philosophies, or actions of contemporary hippie culture. A group that is a joke to many, and an anachronism to even more, is continually finding new members, more than 45 years after the Summer of Love. -SD
The newest series by Northwest documentary portrait and landscape photographer Steve Davis features a class of people almost framed like saints. They’re self-identified 21st-century hippies, seen in vivid detail. Some of the prints are just freaking huge, but it feels right, considering their layered appearances. For instance, Eleanor, 28, Student, beams. She wears big spectacles. Her brown eyes gaze up beatifically. Her head is topped by a fountain of neon dreadlocks, as a mythical creature crawls down her arm in an ice-cream-colored tattoo. Davis grabs people in moments, turns filthy post-hippies into Byzantine saints.– Jen Graves, The Stranger
