What a long strange trip it's been.

• Position: USA Yesterday

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

Four decades ago, Robert Altman was chief staff photographer of Rolling Stone magazine. "For me. the 1960s is the time of Sgt. Pepper, Woodstock, the Summer of Love, be-ins, anti-war protests, and everything else in be tween," he says.

"Part of the magic of the '60s was that we knew there were thousands and thousands, perhaps millions, of us spread beyond the United States and all across the world. I absolutely knew that this was something different and something very special. Those days were unlike any our generation had even heard of before, much less experienced. You might say we lit the fuse to the 'Roaring Twentieth Century.'"

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

"Having grown up in what was, by contrast, a very grey, cold, and damp Britain during the '70s and '80s, the idea of late '60s California has always had an almost mythical. dreamy quality driven, no doubt by the power of Hollywood on an impressionable young mind: comments Hector Proud, managing director of London's Idea Generation Gallery, where Altman's photographs were on exhibit last summer.

"Robert's images, though, are very much a first-person narrative. Of course, he's a sympathetic observer--he's photographing his own--but this is nevertheless a true portrayal of his age. The passion for what he was shooting is wonderfully clear, but there's more to it than that. It's almost as if he's distilled the essence of the era--you get a real sense of the drama, excitement, hope, anger, and idealism of the time, It makes for some iconic images.

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

"It's said that the '60s, and...