Hollywood, California. Photographs courtesy of the Huntington Library.
In 1969, five years before Eve Babitz published her first book, Eve’s Hollywood, she kept a journal—her only surviving diary—in which she honed the voice that would make her the consummate chronicler of seventies Los Angeles. A selection of entries appears in our new Winter issue.
In the journal, Babitz also detailed her experiments with several other art forms, including collage and photography. “I got a camera for $7.98—a Brownie,” she notes on December 21, 1969, “and have been taking pictures of palm trees which are turning out very well.” The Huntington Library, which acquired Babitz’s archive in 2021, is currently displaying several of those photographs in an exhibition that features, among other subjects, those very same palm trees near Babitz’s Hollywood home, and members of her family and her famous circle of friends: Babitz’s father, Sol, a former violinist for the 20th Century–Fox studio orchestra, a bespectacled Annie Leibovitz, and Linda Ronstadt, swaddled in furs.
Annie Leibovitz.
Linda Ronstadt.
Sol Babitz.
Linda Ronstadt.
Eve Babitz’s brownie camera.
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