Death is More Perfect Than Life

Abstract

Larry Clark International Center of Photography New York, New York March 11-June 5, 2005 The conformity that saturated American society in the postwar 1950s created unreal expectations among the population due to the media's use of advertisements and television shows to portray an orderly lifestyle full of hope and promise within the growing strength of capitalism. Beginning in 1963, Larry Clark carved out a niche in photography that reflected the consequences of adolescent dysfunction. By striking a chord with the riddles that ran beneath mainstream society, these images successfully captured the emptiness of the American Dream. However it was not until 1971 that Clark shocked the nation with the publication of Tulsa (1963-71)--a photographic series that depicts young men shooting up drugs, driving cars, playing with guns and engaging in violence. The same year Hunter Thompson published his own search for the American Dream titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), but unlike Clark who was demystified by the midwest from the start. Thompson came back from his venture empty-handed, having experienced nothing extraordinary beyond the dull, erratic subculture that was visually narrated by Clark. The retrospective of Clark's work at the International Center of Photography in New York City features an array of photographs that were taken over the course of 35 years and bear witness to the evolution of alternative youth within our society. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The exhibition opens with a simple, cryptic lower-case sentence that was published in Tulsa: was born in tulsa oklahoma in 1943, when i was sixteen i started shooting amphetamine, i shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but i've gone back through the years, once the needle goes in it never comes out. L.C. Initially centered upon a group of young men who inject themselves with drugs, this narrative of black and white images unfolds from 1963 to 1971. Women are introduced into this lengthy story as either unfortunate bystanders or the bearers of unwanted pregnancies. For instance, in one picture a woman lies in bed with a black eye while in another she allows her boyfriend to inject her with amphetamines. A separate photograph represents the silhouette of a pregnant woman shooting up. Another quote, death is more perfect than life, appears next to an image of a young man sitting on a bed with a gun in hand. Beneath the photograph Clark added dead 1970. The tragic hopelessness that dominated much of alternative youth contrasted sharply with the image that American families tried to represent to one another. However within the narrow scope of bohemian life that Clark portrays, any representation of mainstream society, such as the police, is made to appear as an extension of fascism. One photograph represents a threatening message left for officers by Clark's friend David Roper, while another, situated beyond the photograph of an infant's funeral, features a fight that breaks out against a police informer. Teenage Lust (1958-1983) begins with images of Clark as a youth in Oklahoma. Using his youth as a point of departure for this series, the photographer seeks to keep himself connected to a subculture that was already 30 years younger than him. Even though Clark seeks to make this series cumulative from 1958 to 1983, most of the images were taken in the 1970s and '80s. Marking his move to New York City from the midwest, Clark explored sexual passion and identification between young boys and girls: oral sex, menage-a-trois and various other forms of copulation appear throughout this series. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This group of photographs concludes with portraits of teenage hustlers in New York City. Although Clark believes that sex and drugs were forms of expression that adolescents sought in reaction to the pressures of mainstream society, a sense of context is missing from this collection, leaving them more equivocal and artistic rather than documentary. …