LAHAINA >> A youthful Joni Mitchell tilts toward her lover, Graham Nash, their heads close, in the back seat of a car.

Neil Young leans over the seat of his worn but classic California Woody, seemingly lost in thought.

Jimi Hendrix wears a red headband onstage at Woodstock, the vibrant color drawing all eyes his way.

At the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Lahaina, a new shrine to the makers of rock, folk and blues, these legends of music remain forever young, frozen in time by photographer Henry Diltz.

The gallery opened June 30 with a public talk and exhibition of works by Diltz, a University of Hawaii-Manoa alumnus who got his start as a musician in Honolulu, crossed paths with many a barrier-crashing musician in the hippie era and went on to build a portfolio that includes hundreds of album covers.

Diltz shot the cover of the Doors’ 1970 album “Morrison Hotel,” which lends its name to the gallery, as well as covers for Crosby Stills & Nash, James Taylor, Mama Cass and Hendrix. He was onstage at Woodstock as the concert’s official photographer.

The Maui gallery is his third, opened in partnership with Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and three others. Each was sparked by the photographer’s talent in framing images of some of the most significant musical artists of the ’60s and beyond.

Fleetwood, a Maui resident, hosted the opening. The new gallery is on the ground floor of a two-story complex, where the musician also owns Fleetwood’s General Store and the restaurant Fleetwood’s on Front Street.

Fleetwood became a partner in the gallery because the photographers it champions are “the real deal,” he said.

On the evening of the opening, Fleetwood introduced Diltz to a capacity crowd that had gathered in the restaurant’s showroom, there to hear stories about the photographer’s encounters.

“It’s a world I have lived and breathed for my whole life,” said Fleetwood, whose band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. “How lucky I am to be part of that historical musical journey.”

At a preview tour of the gallery, Fleetwood arrived looking trim, tall and stylish: He wore stovepipe pants, gold jewelry and a long silk scarf. His hair, whiter than it was when he posed for Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” album, was pulled back in the same signature flipped ponytail.

Fleetwood, 69, said he got involved with plans for the gallery after wrapping up a monumental 2014-2015 reunion tour with Fleetwood Mac that brought the full outfit together, including Christine McVie, for the first time since 1998.

The tour, he said, was “very successful, beyond anything I’d ever dreamed. Christine came back and it was hugely gratifying, that alone, and — the band was complete. That was very rare.

“So I’ve come home to Maui and I’m sitting there, and I go, ‘Now what do I do?’ (He and Diltz laughed.)

“It’s part of our game,” Fleetwood said. “I love being around people who are talented. I’m rather addicted to that.”

Diltz, a compact man with a ready smile and open nature, wore an aloha shirt to the gallery opening. He exudes enthusiasm, saying, “You’ve got to keep your passion. That’s what it’s all about!”

As a college student in Manoa in the late 1950s, he fell in love with folk music and eventually joined the Modern Folk Quartet, which he still plays with today. Pursuing a life in music, he moved to California and, on tour, picked up a camera.

Living in Laurel Canyon near myriad other musicians and artists, he crossed paths with the luminous Mitchell and earthy Young, Cass Elliot (aka Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas), and residents of a California commune called The Farm.

Nash joined the circle after he was introduced to Crosby by Mama Cass, and soon Crosby, Stephen Stills and Nash were frequent subjects.

“I really was a musician who picked up a camera,” said Diltz, 77. “I started putting together slide shows so all my hippie friends could see what I was seeing.”

The photos themselves show talent and affection. They are typically warm, translating the energy and exuberance of these musicians, full of desire for recognition.

Mitchell seems always to be both pensive and defiant, looking down at her guitar or out over the California desert.

Young, long-haired, big-boned and probably stoned, draws attention his way in every shot Diltz took.

Diltz was in the right place at the right time, as these friends caught the imagination of American youth. When one photo became an album cover, he started getting commissions: James Taylor, as “Sweet Baby James”; The Eagles, in character for “Desperado”; Richard Pryor, posing as a “savage” for his eponymous first comedy album in 1968.

In 1969 Woodstock happened and Diltz was invited to document it all.

Diltz was there when Hendrix took the stage to close out the festival on the morning of Aug. 18, wearing a bright bandanna and jolting onlookers out of a sleepy daze.

Hendrix’s incendiary performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” remains a singular moment in American history. Diltz describes his wonder at hearing the national anthem at a rock concert: “I was puzzled at first,” he said. “Why was Jimi playing that song? We were an army of hippies.”

The anthem echoed back over the crowd, “to the hills and back,” Diltz said.

“It was riveting. It was for us. We were America.”

His photo of Hendrix on display at the Maui gallery can’t match the radical experience of hearing Hendrix play, but it does capture the guitarist’s rapt attention and pensive expression.

The photographer has now been based in Los Angeles for 50 years.

Diltz says he’s still passionately interested in his surroundings, pursuing photo series on tattoos, graffiti and women looking into their cellphones (“that light, reflected on their faces”).

“It satisfies me if I can frame something,” he said.

That reaches back to his slide-show days, when Diltz framed his shots of California poppies or David Crosby in his viewfinder, and showed the photos without cropping.

He retains ties to Hawaii, recording in Hilo with longtime band-mates Cyrus Faryar (who went on to work with Linda Rondstadt and to produce the Firesign Theatre) and Chip Hatlelid (better known as Chip Douglas, who produced and recorded with the Monkees). Both live in the islands, where it all began.

When he introduced Diltz, Fleetwood said, “We’re trying to make some stories of our own, as we go forward.”

“You’re doing what you love to do, so you keep doing it,” Diltz said. “It’s not a matter of ‘I’ve been successful, so now I’ll quit.’ You love it.

“Always becoming,” he said.