Larry Clark: Return
Way before Larry Clark shot to notoriety for Kids, his 1995 film portraying the lives of young teenagers living a life of drink and drugs, he was a photographer.
As a teenager himself in early 60s Oklahoma, Clark and his friends trod a similar path to those in Kids and were big on amphetamine, extracting the drug from nasal inhalers. Moving to New York to study photography, Clark then served with the military for two years in Vietnam. On returning to Tulsa at the age of twenty, he slid into heroin use, and began using his camera to document himself and those in his circle. Some of these images were published in his landmark photobook Tulsa in 1971.
Half a century on, Clark has revisited his archive for Return, a new photobook being published by STANLEY/BARKER in October. Return covers 1962 to 1973 and features many previously unseen frames. Images are stark, visceral, and hard-hitting. The publisher describes them as ‘a series of raw photographs chronicling the disintegration of the American dream.’
‘I’ve always been interested in small groups of marginalized people who no one would know about otherwise. I photographed my friends over a ten-year period in this secret world that nobody else could have possibly come in and done except someone from the inside like me. You see us from the time we were teenagers up until our twenties and how everything changed and how we changed. There weren’t supposed to be drugs back then. It was supposed to be mom’s apple pie and white picket fences. When I started making work, I said, “Why can’t you show everything?”’ Larry Clark
Larry Clark: Return is available to pre-order from STANLEY/BARKER now, shipping October.
All images © Larry Clark, courtesy STANLEY/BARKER
Michael Kerstgens: The Enemy Within – The Miners Strike 1984/5
Recently published by Dewi Lewis, The Enemy Within is Michael Kerstgens’ document of the Miners Strike of 1984/5, when most British miners took industrial action against pit closures and an immanent loss of jobs. The book takes its title from a phrase then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher chillingly used to describe the miners.
For those who can’t remember it, I urge you to watch Strike – An Uncivil War, which is now streaming on Netflix. It shows how the Thatcher government employed paramilitary policing tactics for the first time in the UK to control and dominate the demonstrating miners. The BBC, ITV, and mainstream print media all colluded with the government to present a picture of violent miners attacking the police, but the film shows a very different reality. When the strike action collapsed in early 1985, pits were rapidly closed without any support or plan for alternative employment. With hope extinguished, many previously solid communities quickly fell apart, sinking into alcohol and drug dependency. The whole chapter is both tragic and shameful, and there is yet to be an official inquiry into the way that the government and police force operated (last denied by Theresa May’s conservative government in 2019).
Michael Kerstgens was studying photography in Germany in 1984, but was born and grew up in Llanelli, South Wales. Publisher Dewi Lewis explains the background, ‘His father spent twelve years working in South Wales for an engineering company involved with the mining industry. As a sixteen-year-old, Kerstgens took a summer job at the company’s Swansea office. He also experienced the underground life of the miners at Cynheidre Colliery. It’s not surprising therefore that once Kerstgens heard about the strike he went to South Wales to find out what was going on and started what would be his first major photography project.’
Now aged 24, Kerstens reconnected with old friends in South Wales, which gave him access unavailable to most photographers. His images are a unique behind-the-scenes view of a community doing its best to resist brutal change imposed by Westminster. One shot shows miners’ wives at a social club on New Years’ Eve, another shows a room packed with men for a National Union of Miners branch meeting, and in one we see a large hall where Christmas dinner has been laid on for scores of miners’ children.
Michael Kerstgens: The Enemy Within – The Miners Strike 1984/5 is available from publisher Dewi Lewis here.
All images © Michael Kerstgens, courtesy Dewi Lewis Publishing
Ten.8 in Focus: The Legacy of Black Image and Body Politics
Opening at The Photographers’ Gallery on 9th October, Ten.8 in Focus: The Legacy of Black Image and Body Politics looks at two specific issues of the influential Birmingham-based magazine, founded by photographers Derek Bishton, Brian Homer and John Reardon in 1978.
The issues featured are Black Image from 1984, and Body Politics from 1987, both of which were produced in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery. In the words of TPG, ‘Ten.8 in Focus is a snapshot of the dynamic and diverse ways Ten.8 explored ideas around power, representation, sexuality, race and photography, which are all still relevant today.’
‘Ten.8 began as a magazine with the stated aim of providing a forum for West Midlands-based photographers to come together and share images and ideas. The first issue was published in February 1979 and had a print run of 500 copies. Eleven years later, when what turned out to be the last edition, Critical Decade, was published, the local magazine had developed into an internationally acclaimed journal – or Photo Paperback as we rather grandly called it – with distribution across North America, mainland Europe and Australia and more than 1,500 subscribers from all over the world. The Digital Dialogues issue sold 5,000 copies, and the first print run of Critical Decade – 3,000 copies – sold out in months.’ Derek Bishton, Ten.8 founder and editor
A number of collaborative events are planned, more details can be found here.
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