This is a cool hardcover collection of James Dean photos, taken by photographer Dennis Stock, shortly before Dean became famous. And their collaboration has an interesting backstory. Dean and Stock met at a party in LA, and after conversing some, Dean invited Stock to an upcoming test screening of East of Eden. 

Stock liked the movie and Dean's performance, and instinctively realized Dean was going to be a star. So he asked if he could spend a couple days with Dean, photographing his life (and essentially origin story), before Dean broke big.

Stock ended up traveling with Dean back to his Indiana hometown, & around to some of Dean's spots in New York, and constructed a photo album of Dean's life just at the end of its anonymity. There's a good movie that documents the time Stock & Dean spent together getting the photo spread titled Life (not the Eddie Murphy joint, this Life was released 15 years later, but..)

Some of the individual photos are iconic now, and probably recognizable from posters you see in Hollywood Blvd tourist traps, etc. But there are also some great deep cuts in the book. Random photos of Dean walking thru his small home town, and working on his childhood farm. Even setting Dean aside, it's a cultural document of 1950s Middle/rural America.

 

(both images are within the book)

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