LARRY CLARK – TULSA / TEENAGE LUST
2014-06-09Larry Clark established his reputation in 1971 with the Tulsa series and the eponymous book, which he worked on between 1963 and 1973. The book became an instant classic and launched a true revolution in documentary photography. In graphic black-and-white Clark showed confrontational, autobiographical images focusing on the violent underworld of Tulsa. The use of hard drugs, explicit violence and sex play a prominent role. Tulsa was shot in a new documentary style: subjective, alienated and completely free of any social agenda. Based on Tulsa, Clark received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to realise his next project. This, however, took ten years, due to Clark’s heroin addiction and a prison sentence.
He finally finished his second extremely innovative project, Teenage Lust. In the book that appeared in 1983, his interest in the drug culture had been replaced by sexual obsession. Clark’s own troubled life and that of his friends form the background for the images in this series. Clark combined self-portraits and photos from his youth in Tulsa with images of young male prostitutes he met in Times Square in New York in the early 1980s. It is an incisive document spanning a period of thirty years about a group of youngsters who made a different choice than the typical American Dream.
Opposite – Untitled, 1970
Exhibition runs from June 13th till September 12th, 2014
Foam
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS
Amsterdam
