"I am born in Tulsa , Oklahoma in 1943. I started to shoot for amphetamines at age 16. I shot every day for three years, with friends, then I left fall, but then I transplanted for many years. Once the needle is retracted, it stands out more. "Larry Clark's voice resonates from the first lines of the presentation of his photographic work as completed to date, the monograph Tulsa.
product of this oil town in northern Oklahoma, Larry Clark grew up in the photographic world. First assistant of his mother (specialist baby pictures), he joined an art school in Wisconsin before returning to his land and deliver his first book since become cult, Tulsa. Between 1963 and 1971, he observes his friends, in their simplest device, delivering on glossy paper the troubling intimacy between sex and drugs that reigns in this small group of young adults. Far from the celebrations in New York later immortalized by Nan Goldin or eroticized portraits of David Armstrong, Clark embarks on a spectator's virgin soil, that of an absolute proximity with its protagonists and its subject: the unemployed youth of a lost corner . For while the city enjoys a thriving economy (unlike Detroit or even New York at the time), it is nevertheless the scene of a crisis that gnaws the United States. Being young in the 1960s, leaving little room for imagination. Before the Summer of Love and sexual liberation (and the large-scale discovery of hallucinogenic drugs), American youth living in a straitjacket and moral well-meaning.
But Larry Clark, himself a drug addict, has access to another American, less flashy than the Cadillac, less visible than adolescents version Happy Days. His friends, heroin, marginal living unbridled sexuality, fueling his desire to immortalize a moment suspended, subversive and unknown to the masses. In a crude quasi-documentary, Tulsa strives to observe where the eyes of others does not arise. A young girl making her squirt with a syringe hero amused grin, a couple sent in the air while a third speaker observes the scene, Sex in hand, a pregnant girl is kicking a young guy, glock hand who began his girlfriend, both of staged encounter that day. One can easily imagine the reception photos at the time of publication. If
themes can be summarized by Clark to Sex, Drugs & Rock'n Roll, they illustrate a particular juncture of the 1960s, the where family moral values fail over to a hedonistic individualism and mark the takeover of the iconic representation of youth by youth. If Clark achieves this incredible degree of intimacy, as if the camera and himself into the background just to leave only the show normally confined behind closed doors, it is mainly that it is community he photographs. It is as old as his models (often presented as teens, the protagonists of that pictures appear more vingtennaires teen), and do not judge them in their occupations. If his photographic work has many Other series that Tulsa, it appears, in the light of his subsequent shootings as the most relevant and significant. When he follows a gang of skateboarders in Los Angeles in the 1990s, it no longer belongs to their world. He became an observer. This change in status dilutes his shots and sterilized osmosis and discomfort felt face shots Tulsa.
But in 1993, shooting a music video for Chris Isaak opens up new perspectives. He became interested in staging and then starts a new career: director. In 1995, he directed Kids. Built around a group of boys (led by the man who would become his favorite actor Leo Fitzpatrick) and girls (Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson in the lead), Kids exposes a day in the life of teen misfits in New York. Alternating male and female threads on sex and love, Kids like those movies where the intelligent puzzle sequences respond by echoing or discord, revealing the inability of the sexes. Filigree weaving his story around a theme booming in the 1990s (AIDS), Kids is taken as a slap, ping, painful and salutary. Followed Another Day In Paradise (inflated a cast including James Woods and Melanie Griffith), Bully, Ken Park and Wassup Rockers. His work as director seems modeled on that of photographer. Devastating impact on his early works ( Tulsa and Kids ), he struggles to offend the stroke of genius. Revolving around the same themes, but also stand out aesthetically without its seminal work, Clark seems to carry indefinitely the same film and capture those same moments, ten, twenty or thirty years apart.
Having heavily inspired by directors like Martin Scorsese (who quotes the filmmaker for his Taxi Driver) or Gus Van Sant (who happen Kids ), Larry Clark will remain as the documentary of a youth adrift. Few artists have seized more acutely the malaise of a generation (that of 15/25 years old regardless of date of creation), his behavior and his demons diehards most violent. The entirety of his photographic work is to discover the Museum of Modern Art in the city of Paris until January 2, 2011. Unfortunately prohibited to minors when they are the main actors and recipients, this exhibition demonstrates the scent of scandal, once again if need be, the decisive blast of Tulsa Later on the representation of youth.
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