This book harkens back to the halcyon days of photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern’s youth. Edited by Jesse Pearson, editor of Nudity Today and Apology Magazine, Contact High couldn’t have a simpler premise--it’s all about naked girls smoking weed. This cheeky and playful collection of portraits recalls a time in Kern’s life when, he says, “I spent a lot of time with my friends smoking pot, listening to music, running around in the woods and sometimes swimming naked. Back then, when I was around a naked girl, weed was either about to be smoked or had been smoked.” In 1999, Kern met a model in Los Angeles who reminded him of the girls he used to smoke with back in North Carolina. So, seizing the moment, he “went down to Charleston to shoot her at her house and in the swamps around there. Her ambition at 18 years old was to open a head shop. She had a small gro-lite farm in her bedroom.” This carefree and sexy series of images from 1999 to the present is charged with an atmosphere of freewheeling, optimistic hedonism. Readers will undoubtedly get a real buzz from the beauty and sensuality of the images--perhaps tinged with a bittersweet hint of nostalgia for the sexy abandon of their own carefree youth.
Richard Kern is renowned for his underground films, and for his pithy remark "If the model is the exhibitionist then I am the voyeur." The New York Times has called his pornography-influenced images "uncommonly visceral instances of the so-called male gaze." Some folks just call them porn: his publication credits include the magazines Barely Legal, Finally Legal, Tight, Candy Girls and Juggs. Kern was born in North Carolina in 1954, and has lived and worked in New York City for some 30 years. In the 80s, he produced a series of short films since recognized as the central works of the movement that has come to be called the Cinema of Transgression. In the 90s he moved back to still photography while occasionally directing music videos for performers like Sonic Youth and Marilyn Manson. He has shown his work around the world at venues including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the London Institute of Contemporary Art and New York's Feature, Inc. This is his tenth monograph, following titles including Kern Noir, New York Girls and Model Release. It is the first to focus exclusively on his digital work.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 5.75 x 8 in. / 96 pgs / 80 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/1/2007 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2007 p. 62
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881586363TRADE List Price: $29.95 CAD $35.00
Published by Charta. Essays by Geoff Nicholson and Sabina Spada.
One of the most transgressive of American photographers, Richard Kern makes brazen portraits of enticing nude women. But if his photographs easily cross over into the world of pornography, they are distinguished from prosaic porn by their beauty and, more importantly, their treatment of voyeurism as a theme. As Kern once said, "the best part of anything is watching," and through his photographs, he not only seduces the viewer into looking but forces a subsequent recognition of his or her own voyeurism. This publication presents a new series of black and white photographs.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.25 x 10.75 in. / 180 pgs / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/2/2002 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2002
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881583782TRADE List Price: $35.00 CAD $40.00
The spectacle of Richard Kern's legendary filmmaking and photography incites many reactions, but rarely is indifference among them. His imagery's characteristic blitzkrieg of subversive eroticism, porno kitsch, punk sensibility and aggressive femininity has won admirers of the so-called grunge aesthetic. This book has images of Kern's recent work, which stands at the intersection of fashion, sex and politics. The critical text by Paparoni explores the relationship between some of Kern's subjects and famous images from pre-war art history.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.5 x 10.75 in. / 72 pgs / 45 color / 9 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 1/2/1999 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 1999
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881582013TRADE List Price: $24.95 CAD $27.50
Richard Kern: Digital Kern
Kern Noir
Richard Kern