Comments on: Teenage Lust

By: Chris Norris

Chris Norris — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:48:50 +0000

I was just in Berlin last week and saw this exhibit. I didn’t know much about Larry Clark before seeing it, but three things stood out:
1. His statement about how these pictures reminded him of all the horrible things he did (I remember a mention of a gang bang) was troubling. He wasn’t just documenting, he seemed to be reliving events that he thought of fondly.
2. Some of the pictures made me feel slightly ill. I suppose they were supposed to.
3. Did you see the video Clark had put together that was a few clips from the Phil Donahue show in 1992? It was in the back video room, along with videos that were documentaries about Newton and Gibson. I found the stuff on the Donahue show as disturbing or more than Clark’s pictures. It wasn’t so much the things described on the show as it was Donahue’s insistence that young high school boys recount and even reenact rapes the suffered. I found Donahue’s actions much more appaling than Clark’s picture taking.

By: Feli di Giorgio

Feli di Giorgio — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:26:20 +0000

At some point you have to ask yourself “Is Ellsworth M. Toohey winning?”.

Big questions and there probably is no simple answer.

Feli

By: matt

matt — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:04:26 +0000

I saw the Clark exhibit last week with a friend and I thought it was like a bad fashion shoot. I guess he’s finally toned down a bit, since instead of full frontals with these young teens, the kids only “mooned” Larry.
After Tulsa, each of Clark’s books have been more and more disappointing . Teen Lust is full of images which men, both gay & straight won’t admit enjoying, but will take a long look at. Since Clark was twice the age of his “models” I understand people feeling it was wrong. But we live in a very weird country these days. Just a few years ago taxpayers spent 42 million dollars investigating a f*cking blowjob! Sturges is right, the Europeans must think we’re retarded. Cincinnati went crazy over Mapplethorpe a few years ago and even though I don’t want to look at a guy’s arm inside another man, I think freedom of speech is too important to suppress. Isn’t art an extension of speech?

By: Stan B.

Stan B. — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:30:12 +0000

Speaking of context, Allen Ginsberg is a self professed member of NAMBLA- the reason why he was banned from being the grand marshal of the Pride parade in NYC a couple of years back…

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:52:42 +0000

Context is bs. If it makes a difference to you, it’s because you want it to. If a rape is art in a gallery, why not in real life?

I can’t judge Larry Clark, I don’t know anything about his “art”, but not attempting to stop a horrific act occurring to someone else (if indeed that’s the case) would be wrong by almost any set of morals, putting it in “context” doesn’t change anything. If he kept his photos in a dark, dingy, downstairs office in his house, what would we think?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:52:00 +0000

Context is bs. If it makes a difference to you, it’s because you want it to. If a rape is art in a gallery, why not in real life?

By: Leonidas Halkidis

Leonidas Halkidis — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:30:28 +0000

Hi Alec!
I happened to visit the show in Berlin just a week before you.
I had seen in the past some of Clark’s pictures printed in books
(e.g. on the cover of the book ‘Freiheit macht arm’ by Diedrich Diederichsen; by the way Amazon.de does not show the book cover:
http://www.amazon.de/Freiheit-macht-arm-Diedrich-Diederichsen/dp/3462023071)
and was curious to see them in an exhibition.
I do not think that the context makes them ‘acceptable’.
I don’t see why you’d be troubled if they were ads.
Isn’t every single picture that a photographer exhibits to the public
an ‘ad’ for himself and his personal universe?

By: Vinegar Tom

Vinegar Tom — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:09:38 +0000

Isn’t part of the problem here the paradoxical idea that you can somehow counteract or critique an appetite for by creating images that simply feed that appetite? You can *say* that your picture of a heaped plate of french fries critiques our eating habits, but it will probably just make most people hungry (Martin Parr’s food shots, it’s true, do have the opposite effect, but British food is uniquely disgusting).

I’ve decided you’re onto something here, Alec, and will try theming my life for the next few months (perhaps you are a fan of The Dice Man?). As a tinnitus sufferer, I unfortunately do already have a permanent soundtrack…

By: Steve Murray

Steve Murray — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:45:27 +0000

“I have my particular interpretation of what my work is about – but as soon as it enters a public space that interpretation is, to an extent, redundant.”

Colin: I believe the viewer always brings their own unique inner experience to bear when lookin at any photographs, and the interpretation or intention of the photographer is really quite irrelevant to the viewer. One has no control over that.

By: Jen Bekman

Jen Bekman — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:28:26 +0000

Thematically speaking, a 12 year old fashion model named Maddison Gabriel has stirred up some recent outrage and controversy. Yeesh, indeed!