"Some regard him as a brilliant artist who flirts with the boundaries of acceptability; others as a creepy voyeur"- http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/oct/08/larry-clark-paris-banned-photographs
I decided to look into Larry Clark because his 'Tulsa' collection shows the classic rock'n'roll, carefree lives of young people (during the seventies i believe) who are subjects that are involved in drugs, sex and violence. The images are so debated because of their explicit contents and I think what makes it so controversial is that the message in the photographs dont necessarily show the activities the subjects are involved in as dangerous or negative actions, instead the viewer feels as though they are given an insight into a new or different kind of lifestyle. The perspective for each individual audience member could be different, but the overall mood of these photographs dont necessarily warn us about this dangerous lifestyle, but instead invites us to see a story or personality through the many images in this collection, such as a couple being intimate in a bath tub or friends injecting drugs into each other and looking so calm about it- the audience dont see either the bad side effects to the use of the drugs or the euphoric effects of the drugs, so the photos are quite ambiguous.
I have mainly wanted to explore looking at how he captures the behavior of young people under the influence of substances and living by the carefree 'life on the edge' lifestyle because I wanted to look at how the exposure of that imagery effects the audience. Looking at different reviews such as the website mentioned above, I can tell that many find it shocking, personally i feel its almost rebelling from traditional art of photography because im left uncertain about how I should feel about looking at the photos, and maybe that was exactly what the artist wanted to achieve so that each individual takes what they want from the images.
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