Tulsa

Product Information

First edition, first printing; 4to (305 x 223 mm, 12 x 8¾ in); black-and-white photographs printed in offset, toned; photo-illustrated adhesive-bound wrappers, corners lightly creased as often, other handling mark and a short tear at the foot of spine, a very good copy; [64]pp.

The raw, haunting images taken in 1963, 1968, and 1971 document a youth culture progressively overwhelmed by self-destruction -- and are as moving and disturbing today as when they first appeared. The artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, among others. His recent photography addresses similar subjects, but with the distance of an observer, and a more prominent formal sensibility. Tulsa is a collection of black-and-white photographs by Larry Clark of the life of young people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When it first appeared in 1971, Larry Clark’s groundbreaking book Tulsa sparked immediate controversy across the nation.

Born on January 19, 1943 in Tulsa, OK, Clark studied at a commercial photography school after working as an assistant to his mother, who worked as a portrait photographer of children. Often controversial, Clark’s black-and-white images unflinchingly capture overt sexuality, drug use, and violence, as seen in his iconic photobook Tulsa (1971) and his debut feature film Kids (1995). Clark has also produced films; Kids (1994), based on his experiences with New York City teenagers and their culture of drugs, alcohol, and sex, and Another Day in Paradise (1999).

When someone I knew would die, which happened a lot, I'd think they were one of the lucky ones," he told me. Clark learned photography early (his mother was a photographer of babies) and there’s a great deal of darkroom technique behind these pictures.While a teenager Clark developed his photography skills working as an assistant to his mother, a door-to-door baby photographer. Considered shocking for its graphic portrayal of the intimate details of its subjects' risky lives, the book launched Clark's career. He served in the military during the Vietnam War and has been a freelance photographer based in New York since 1966.