Tulsa, USA, 1943; lives and works in New York

Teenage Lust, 1983
portfolio, 10 photographs

Larry Clark, the renowned director of the movies Kids (1995) and Ken Park (2002), began his career and defined his visual language through the medium of photography, a field in which he has played a most influential role in the revitalization of American realism. The series Teenage Lust, featured in this exhibition in full, was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and, in the course of a decade, brought together scenes of violence, sex, and drug usage involving adolescents. Clark's images evoke some of the main issues of photography: portraiture, the contrast between posed photographs and snapshots, and the complex and often troubled relationship between photographer and subject.