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Looker
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Product Description
Richard Kern is a post-modernist punk photographer who has worked in New York city rock music and “No Wave” art circles since the 1970s. In Looker, through a series of carefully constructed vignettes, Kern’s models proceed through their daily private lives, seemingly unaware of the camera. Or are they wittingly playing into the obvious cinematic intrigue? The balance of control present in each frame is a powerful and sensual statement.
Looker is thought-provoking in its gentle nature, pastoral tones, and caring reflection of private innocence—but it is also freshly and stunningly erotic, silently exuberant in its portrayal of intimacy and abandon. Richard Kern’s photographs are a peek into a world of mystery and eroticism.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #186975 in Books
- Published on: 2008-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 160 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780810995307
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Underground filmmaker, music video director and photographer Kern (Action) has built the latter half of his career on documenting a kind of hipster porn aesthetic, and this latest book, his tenth, continues that trend, with glossy full-color images of women caught, seemingly unawares, in various stages of undress. At their best, the pictures here are simple and effective, as much about the play of light, atmosphere and composition as about any forced notions of sexuality. At their worst, they are simply cheesy. One, an obvious homage to the iconic 70s image of a female tennis payer scratching her butt, comes off as less sexy than clumsy and stale. As might be expected in a book that purports to be created on the fly, there's an abundance of public nudity and crotch shots here-perhaps one of Kern's particular fetishes-and most of the images are in soft focus, as if taken with telephoto lens from behind bushes and across fields. Kern prefers his models natural and disheveled; readers might welcome the lack of make-up and artifice in his photographs-assuming that the essential artifice of reconstructed voyeurism doesn't turn them off, that is.
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About the Author
Geoff Nicholson has written fourteen novels, including The Food Chain, Footsucker and Bleeding London, which was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Prize.
Customer Reviews
Not a Voyeur
There's a little bit of the voyeur in all of us. It seems like Richard Kern is in a good position to take advantage of this and provide an excellent collection of photographs. Unfortunately, this book is a bit of a disappointment.
Part of the disappointment comes from the simple fact that a professional photographer can't be a true voyeur; or, at least, he can't publish those photographs in a book. Geoff Nicholson hints at this a bit it his opening essay. However, Mr. Nicholson also sets up expectations in his essay about furtively trying to take photographs on the street that are not realized in the photos that follow.
That is not to say that there aren't some good photographs in this book. Early photos in a sequence, particularly the photos taken outdoors of a single subject are often quite compelling. They truly seem to capture a person unawares; however, as the sequences go on, and the models get into states of further undress, the pictures are obviously staged, which destroys the voyeuristic quality.
In some ways, Mr Kern is trying to capture something next to impossible to capture well. Still, he manages, occasionally, to capture more than I expected. If his focus would be on what he achieved in the earlier part of the photo sequences here, I think he would have been more successful.
Very Well Done
This Is A Tastefully Done Look Into Voyeurism Without Any Creepy Thrown In. These Are Images Often Thougt About, But Not Captured By Photography. Bravo !
an erotic photography classic
This is a book that anyone interested in photography will enjoy -- the images are playful, inventive and genuinely erotic, wittily toying with our expectations and luring us in with every page. It's also one of the most beautifully produced photo books I've seen in recent years. A real hit.
