LARRY CLARK
American
Larry Clark first came to prominence in the New
York art world with the publication of Tulsa
(1971), a collection of graphic photographs of
Clark and his friends hanging out, using drugs,
having sex, and playing with guns in the homes
and suburbs of that Midwestern city. As a photo-
grapher and filmmaker, Clark has concentrated
his energies on themes of adolescent angst, self-
destruction, physical violence, masculine aggres-
sion, raw sexuality, and drug culture. Inspired
by the conventions of documentary and the
immediacy of montage, Clark either records or
creates intimate situations that indict the viewer’s
voyeuristic fascination with the potential for vio-
lence in human subjectivity and with the interac-
tions that linger beyond normative veneers. Clark
may be criticized for condoning, exploiting, or
enabling destructive activities and for sympathy
with white masculine excess, but Clark maintains
that his work presents cautionary moral tales of
under-explored social and cultural dysfunction
and marginalization. Clark’s work provokes much
discussion, often as a result of censorship, regard-
ing the psychic and physical character of adoles-
cence and widespread unease, silence, and blindness
about the tensions in adolescent and adult-adoles-
cent relationships.
Clark began his career as a photographer assist-
ing his mother’s business, going door-to-door as a
baby portrait photographer in his hometown of
Tulsa, Oklahoma. At 18, Clark enrolled in a com-
mercial photography school in Milwaukee, Wis-
consin. Influenced by students at a nearby art
school and the work of W. Eugene Smith, Clark
began to think of his medium as being able to pre-
sent complex information and narrative. Clark’s
friends in Tulsa had long been accustomed to see-
ing him with a camera, and Clark began to photo-
graph unsanitized aspects of adolescence in white
suburbia. Alluding to the formal and autobiogra-
phical conventions of documentary and using a
35-mm camera, a wide-angle lens, and existing
light sources, Tulsa records graphic scenes of
sex, violence, and drug use in youth culture as
naturalized activity. Drafted in 1964, Clark was
in the army through 1966, serving in Vietnam,
and he then traveled throughout the Unites
States, with periods living in New York and
New Mexico. In 1971, he met Danny Seymour,
who had worked with Robert Frank, and Sey-
mour was inspired to finance Tulsa.Clark
received a National Endowment for the Arts
$5000 ‘‘Imprimatur of Excellence’’ grant for his
work on Tulsa, but after multiple arrests and
convictions due to drug and alcohol abuse, vio-
lent acts, and the shooting of a friend during a
dispute,Clarkserveda19-monthterminamax-
imum security prison, beginning in 1976.Tulsa,
the first book published by Ralph Gibson’s Lus-
trum fine arts press, became a milestone of photo-
graphy in the second half of the twentieth century.
Teenage Lust(1983) is more sexual, disturbing,
and much more autobiographical thanTulsa, with
images of adolescents living on the edge without
fear of violence, dying, and death, and with photo-
graphs that directly locate Clark’s experience
within the context of his work. Clark confronts
his viewers with images of youth culture in self-
destruction, and critics have charged that these
images of teen lust and sex often normalize male
aggression and its unpleasant consequences.
Reflecting Clark’s enduring obsession with teen-
agers and sexuality,The Perfect Childhood(1993)
examines the influence of mass media on teenagers.
Larry Clark, 1992(1992), Clark’s first photo-essay
in color, consists of portraits that emphasize teen-
age male sexuality and autoerotic play with guns.
As a filmmaker, Clark continues his interest in
chronicling the confusion, desire, rage, inhumanity,
and potential tenderness that animate human rela-
tionships. In narratives dedicated to a realistic
imperative, untrained or amateur actors and con-
vincing scenes of physical and sexual violence hint
at the flaws in human character, and they challenge
cultural veneers regarding the conflicts of adoles-
cence. Clark’s films have been banned from many
venues because they challenge cultural taboos with
images of adolescent nudity, sexuality, self-destruc-
tion, and brutality.
Clark’s first feature film,Kids(1995), continues
themes of masculine aggression and drug activity,
and features a male protagonist who pursues theCLARK, LARRY