Untitled, from "Teenage Lust"

Larry Clark

1972–73, printed 1981 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

This photograph appeared on the cover of Teenage Lust, Clark’s 1983 narrative and pictorial "autobiography." Although his written account reads as a seemingly endless stream of drug use, sexual encounters, violence, and run-ins with the police, many of the book’s photographs focused longingly on the innocence and bravado of youths half his thirty years, and evoked the thrill of discovery and the sensuality of flesh. In 1974 Clark wrote, "since i became a photographer i always wanted to turn back the years. always wished i had a camera when i was a boy . . . in 1972 and 1973 the kid brothers in the neighborhood took me with them in their teen lust scene. it took me back."

Artist

Larry Clark

Date

1972–73, printed 1981

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1994