Did JD try to immortalize himself?

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I know he hired professional photographer Dennis Stock to capture his every move, but why?

No, actually Dennis was hired by LIFE to document Jimmy's home life back in Indiana.

Did he know or sense he was going to die?

Jimmy told several people that he would not live to see 30.

Did Jimmy know that he was going to become a icon and leave a legacy? I say yes. The reason why is because of his comments about how a great person is able to bridge the gap between life and death and live on after he dies. He also made similar interesting comments to Bill Bast when they first met, that if he can just put all of his being into one goal he would achieve it and be immortal. Jimmy also told other people that he wanted to conquer death. In a way he did.

People know they're going to die one day. Sometimes they think it will be sooner than later. Sometimes they're right, and sometimes they're wrong.

I'd assume many people who go into movies may think, however briefly, about the relative immortality (an oxymoron??) that fame on film provides, so it's reasonable to think Dean considered it, too.

And there seemed to be a certain ruthlessness in James Dean's psychology: Raymond Massey and Rock Hudson couldn't stand him (although that could be Dean's Stanislavski approach: tick off people who are supposed to revile you on screen), GIANT actor Earl Holliman said Jimmy had a thing about "the ends justifying the means", Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando thought Dean was a basket case mentally, yet Elizabeth Taylor and Julia Harris and Sal Mineo and others adored him.

His death obsession? A lot of young men have a death obsession in their late-teens and early-twenties. It's kind of a normal sexual development issue.

Was it excessive? Depends on who you asked.

But perhaps Death was obsessed with Jimmy: the sage actor Alex Guinness told Jimmy one week before his death that he'd soon die in that Spider. And he did.

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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

In the book, Surviving James Dean, by Bill bast, Jimmy's friend and sex partner, Bill claims that Jimmy hated Rock Hudson for living an inauthentic life, being a homosexual while pretending to be a normal, straight male.

That's silly. You couldn't come out in the '50s.

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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

In a sense it was silly since Jimmy wasn't exactly straight himself. But Hudson did go to extremes to cover it up.

I read in a few Dean Bio's that he did talk about settling down and having a family .I think it was just a incredible coincidence that the way he lived his life fed into him being immortalized .I don't think he had a death wish because at the time of his death he had gotten into racing cars and it was a love of his but .Dean was a bit of a tortured soul who was a bit self destructive .Tupac shakur was fascinated with death alot of it had to do with i think the feelings of the world turning against but even he couldnt of predicted the situation in vegas .The sculpture that was made of jimmy's head was done just after his death it was from a guy who followed him for a period of time when he went back to indiana.Suffering from insomnia seems to be a normal thing in hollywood with the crazy work schedule 16 hours working out of the day basically working like a slave .Also jimmy was enigmatic so i think all the ingredients were there and then him dying young was just icing on that cake .The studios just fueled the legacy even more keeping it alive and making it look like jimmy was racing toward and immediate end .No one can predict the future thats for certain.I'm sure the furthest thing going through deans head when he was driving down that california road was dying young .

character is habitual action, we are what we do habitually.