The new exhibition at Paris' Museum of Modern Art forces you to question yourself and, above all, the photographer.
The retrospective "Kiss the Past Hello" examines the 40 year career of the US photographer Larry Clark -- also a filmmaker best known for the 1995 movie Kids which caused massive scandal for its raw portrayal of teenagers, sex and drugs.
ARTKABINETT social network of fine art collectors will be leaving the kids at home for this one!
The exhibition features 200 images focusing on the lives of American teenagers between 1960 and 2010. From skateboarding to punk rock to drugs, firearms, suicide and sex, for four decades 67 year old Clark has made a name for himself for his uncompromising look at what goes on among our youth.
In the photos they have sex, explore their bodies and take drugs, often in the most shocking way. In one shot a pregnant woman injects drugs into her arm as she sits half naked on a chair. In another a teenager bends over for a close up of her genitals.
Penetration, masturbation, erection after erection - the photographs are addictive, compelling, but also aggressively uncomfortable.
And this objection to the extreme graphicness of the photos is something that Paris' town hall thinks belongs for adult eyes only.
For the first time in France, theyíve decided to censor the exhibition.
If Larry Clark's adolescent subjects showed up in Paris to see his work, they would not be allowed in because viewings are restricted to the over 18's.
It puts Paris's reputation as a home of artistic liberation into question.
In protest against the age restriction, an explicit shot from the collection was splashed on the front page of the newspaper Libération.
It shows a young, naked couple on the back seat of a car, touching each other's private parts.
Most people think a warning to parents would have been enough especially considering that all teenagers have easy access on the internet to far more degrading, pornographic images.
If anyone should be banned from seeing teenagers involved in sexual activity itís the adults. Even Larry Clark himself says these photos are for the youngsters involved.
His book Tulsa, published in 1971, was a landmark work: a photo documentary illustrating his young friends' drug use in black and white. His follow-up was Teenage Lust (1983), an "autobiography" of his teen past through the images of others.
It included his family photos, more teenage drug use, graphic pictures of teenage sexual activity, and young male hustlers in Times Square, New York City. Clark constructed a photographic essay titled "The Perfect Childhood" that examined the effect of media in youth culture.
After publishing other photographic collections, Clark met Harmony Korine in New York and asked Korine to write the screenplay for his first feature film, Kids which was released to controversy and moderate critical acclaim in 1995.
Clark's films often deal with seemingly lurid material but are told in a straightforward manner.
Directors such as Gus Van Sant and Martin Scorsese have stated that they were influenced by Clark's early photography, according to Peter Biskind's book Down and Dirty Pictures.
In both his photographic and cinematic works, Clark pursues a set of related themes: the destructiveness of dysfunctional family relationships, masculinity and the roots of violence, religious intolerance and bigotry, the links between mass imagery and social behaviors, and the construction of identity and sexuality in adolescence.
Film critics who do not find social or artistic value in Clark's work have labeled his films obscene, exploitative and even borderline child pornography because of their frequent and explicit depictions of teenagers using drugs and having sex.
Clark has won the top prizes at both the Cognac Festival du Film Policier (for "Another Day in Paradise") and the Stockholm Film Festival (for "Bully").
His photographs are part of public collections at several prestigious art museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Clark is represented by the Simon Lee Gallery in London and the Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York City.
