I've just realized, going off the reservation is the opposite of drinking the Kool-Aid.

Posted June 18, 2003 1:54 PM by Avram

You're right. So, Q.E.D., they drink Kool-Aid on the reservation.

Posted June 19, 2003 7:01 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

It really sounds like he's accusing Clark of child pornography...unless all the adolescents are Barely Legal, a bemusing phrase.

Posted June 19, 2003 2:55 PM by Xopher

Tee hee....I've often wondered if it's the art or if it's me. Now I know!

Posted June 19, 2003 3:59 PM by Emma

Call me sleazy if you like, but I actually really like Larry Clark's films and photos. The reviewer is a Puritan in hipster's clothing. My God, the photographer actually finds the sight of young, naked bodies erotic! Even male ones! What's civilization coming to?

Posted June 20, 2003 12:52 AM by Robert L

Robert, I don't think that's quite it. I don't get the whiff of Puritanism off him. I think he's saying that the interesting characteristics of Clark's work aren't what Clark says they are, nor what we pretend to believe they are.

Posted June 20, 2003 7:45 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The impolite version: Larry likes looking at naked adolescents, especially boys.
Tell me there's not a bluenose lurling behind that staement.
It's always a tough proposition to try to explain why you like someone's art to someone who's slagging it. (And have you ever seen any of Clark's photos or films? I have the feeling you haven't, unless you've seen one of his photo books over at Jack's house, since his early books are out of print and very hard to find and the films haven't played for that long.) The fact is, Clark manages to capture a very vivid, intimate feeling that a lot of more "skillful" photographers lack. (Another photographer much in the same vein is Nan Goldin, who's sometimes gotten similarly slagged, I believe.
And in fact a great many of Clark's photos are not nudes.
But it's always going to be more fashionable to sneer than to praise. The guy probably slagged Robert Mapplethorpe too. Who is in a whole different vein, admittedly.)

Posted June 21, 2003 1:00 AM by Robert L

I don't hear bluenose. I can imagine myself observing that some author has an unnaturally high incidence of plots where people get tied up, but that wouldn't mean I disapprove of people tieing each other up. Besides, bluenoses don't use such flat, plain descriptive terms. The fact that they're disapproving doesn't matter; it's still a charged subject for them, and that shows in their language.

I've seen some of his Clark's stills, but not his films. He clearly has a knack for photographing intimate situations. What strikes me about them is that his subjects are showing off more than they're posing. They're a little awkward and shy, but they aren't doing those awful, cardboardy tableaux that are a staple of commercial erotica.

That's why he can get away with it, of course. If he didn't have that chrism of artistic and social significance, and if his subjects didn't come off as amateurs, he'd get shut down faster than a burlesque troop playing Vatican City.

Posted June 21, 2003 12:22 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Well, perhas we can agree to disagree here. To me, the bald statement that begins the review (the negative part) is what is really bugging the guy. Let's say tha t Clark were a photogrpaher who specialized in photographing cats, or flowers. Would the reviewer be so acerbic? I doubt it.
Again, to compare Mapplethorpe: While the main things that the public saw were his photos of flowers or celebrities, it was one things; when his photos of a naked man with a whip handle shoved up his ass, or even actual hardcore sex, then you saw the hipper-than-thou attitudes come out about what a hype it had all been.
I urge you to take another look at Clark's work. He's not trying to be Ansel Adams. And as I say, the critic is off the mark, in that a great deal of his work is not nudes. There is a certain "exploitation" angle to his work, but there is to Diane Arbus too, and she's managed to wether the storm.

Posted June 23, 2003 3:24 AM by Robert L