sexual conquest of female virgins. The film fol-
lows 24 hours of a group of young New Yorkers
in their daily activities of hanging out, skate-
boarding, doing drugs, being violent, and having
sex. The film’s narrative is propelled by one of the
girl’s learning that she is HIV-positive and look-
ing for the boy who seduced and infected her.
Clark commissioned the screenplay from Har-
mony Korine, who was a skateboarder in his last
year of high school when he met Clark. Shot in a
ve ́rite ́ style with mostly untrained actors, Kids,
reflects Clark’s desire to make ‘‘the great Amer-
ican teenage movie, like the great American
novel.’’Kidswon the Golden Palm award at Can-
nes Film Festival.
Clark’s second feature film, Another Day in
Paradise (1998), is a grim coming-of-age story,
set in the 1970s. Based on a novel by ex-convict
Eddie Little, the story concerns the conflict
between a life of drugs and crime and the desire
for family as two aging junkies mentor two young
lovers. The everyday life of heroin users with its
inherent violence appears almost ancillary to the
ordinary pursuit for strong interpersonal relation-
ships.Bully(2001), is based on the bookBully: A
True Story of High School Revenge by Jim
Schutze. The film retells the story of an actual
murder of a high school bully by a group of
high school friends in Hollywood, Florida, in
1993.Ken Park(2002), co-directed with Ed Lach-
man, takes place in suburban Visalia, California.
The film focuses on four teenagers and the adults
in their lives and exposes the difficult sexual long-
ings and fears that underlie their self-identity, and
many aspects of their relationships become vehi-
cles for expression of subconscious emotional
responses. The explicit depiction of sexual practice
and sexualized violence juxtaposed against norma-
tive social veneers suggests insight into the darker
aspects of human character.
ScottShererSeealso:Censorship
Biography
Born Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1943. Commercial photography train-
ing, Layton School of Art Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1961.
Served U.S. Army 1964–66. National Endowment for the
Arts Grant, 1973. Lives and works in New York City.
Individual Exhibitions
1971 San Francisco Art Institute; San Francisco, California
1975 International Museum of Photography and Film,
George Eastman House; Rochester, New York
1986 Fotografiska Museet; Stockholm, Sweden
1999 Larry Clark; Gro ̈ninger Museum; Gro ̈nginen, Nether-
lands (traveled to Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, and
Galeri Kamel Mennour, Paris)Selected Group Exhibitions
1981 Whitney Biennial; The Whitney Museum of American
Art; New York, New York
1985 American Images 1945–80; Barbican Art Gallery; Lon-
don, England
1986 The Museum of Contemporary Art; Los Angeles,
California
1992 American Documents in the Fringe; Tokyo Metropoli-
tan Museum of Photography; Tokyo, Japan
1995 Feminin-Masculine: le sexe de l’art; Centre Georges
Pompidou; Paris, France
1996 Wiener Secession; Vienna (traveled to The Photogra-
phers’ Gallery, London, and Milwaukee Art Museum,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin)Selected Works
Tulsa; New York, 1971
Teenage Lust; New York: Larry Clark, 1983
Larry Clark, 1992; New York: Thea Westreich, 1992
The Perfect Childhood, New York and Zurich: Scalo, 1993
Kids; New York: Grove Press, 1995
Kids; Shining Excalibur Films, 95 minutes, 1995
Another Day in Paradise; Trimark Pictures, 101 minutes,
1998
Heroin; New York: Power House Cultural Entertainment,
March 1999
Larry Clark; Groningen, Netherlands: Groninger Museum,
1999
Bully; Lions Gate Films, 112 minutes, 2001
Ken Park; Cinea, 96 minutes, 2002Further Reading
Chang, Chris. ‘‘Larry Clark’s Just a Guy Who Can’t Say
No. Can You?’’Film Comment, 38, no. 5 (Sept./Oct.
2002).
Doherty, Tom. ‘‘Clueless kids.’’Cineast, 21, no. 4 (Decem-
ber 1995).
Giroux, Henry. ‘‘Media Panics and the War Against
‘Kids’: Larry Clark and the Politics of Diminished
Hopes.’’ InBreaking in to the movies: film and the
culture of politics. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell
Publishers, 2002.
Hooks, Bell. ‘‘White Light.’’Sight and Sound6, no. 5 (May
1996).
Mun ̃oz, Jose ́ Esteban. ‘‘Rough boy trade: queer desire/
straight identity in the photography of Larry Clark.’’
InThe Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of
Desire, edited by Deborah Bright. London and New
York: Routledge, 1998.
Savage, Jon. ‘‘Now Larry Clark’s Kids.’’Sight and Sound6,
no. 5 (May 1996).
Schrader, Paul. ‘‘Babes in the hood.’’Artforum Interna-
tional33, no. 9 (May 1995).CLARK, LARRY