Henry Diltz was a banjo player and singer in the Modern Folk Quartet in the mid-1960s when he took up photography as a hobby. As it happened, many of his subjects were his neighbors in Laurel Canyon who were at that moment writing and recording what would become some of rock and pop music’s most celebrated compositions but were still relatively unknown.

Henry’s intimate portraits of what would become the Laurel Canyon folk-rock elite—such as this iconographic photo of Joni Mitchell at her Lookout Mountain cottage in 1970 where she and Graham Nash cohabitated (and Nash wrote “Our House”)—are among the tens of thousands of photos he’s amassed over the years as one of the first “rock” photographers.

On Saturday, Henry launched the Los Angeles branch of the Morrison Hotel galleries—so named for his cover shot of the Doors 1968 album—already displaying his work in Soho and La Jolla, California with a packed reception (appropriately enough just down the block from the Hollywood Guitar Center).

The gallery also sells work of other leading rock photographers including San Francisco’s Jim Marshall, New York’s Bob Gruen, and L.A.’s Neal Preston, who was something of a court photographer for Led Zeppelin.

Morrison Hotel Fine Art Music Photography, 323-874-2068.

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