Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fetish As a State of Mind, May 18, 2001
At first glance it is tempting to see Richard Kern as an imitator of Eric Kroll. This is hardly the case, but the comparison is inevitable. Both are New York photographers who specialize in fetish work, primarily photographing women. Both have a good sense of graphic imagery. In truth, though, the similarities end at the surface. Their intent and approach are radically different.Kroll has a strong background in commercial and fashion photography which gives his images a more glitzy, mainstream look. Kern came to New York and immediately fell in with the extreme sex crowd. He spent his early years publishing little, Xeroxed magazines and making short films with such dark stars as Lydia Lunch, Nick Zedd and Cassandra Stark. In a sense, "New York Girls," marks a shift closer to mainstream fetish work. These are harsh, revealing images. His color work reminds me a bit of Nan Goldin, but his black and white images are uniquely his own. The sexuality is blatant, sometimes erotic and sometimes not. There is a profound alienation in his images. These are people being sexual to and for themselves. They rarely meet the viewer's eyes. When they do face the camera it is to issue a challenge, to dare the viewer to cross the line into a solipsistic universe of tension and release. Many of the photographs are haunting. There seem to be layers of content that keep the viewer's attention for hours. If you haven't encountered Kern's work before or a looking for the right collection of fetish work you will find this and excellent introduction to photography's more challenging visions.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent,excellent,excellent, November 19, 1999
i cant say enough good things about this book!the photographs are striking reverently disturbing master art with no fashion model looks. i highly recommend it.
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Distinctive and at times sensual, but very single-minded., January 20, 2000
Richard Kern's photographic and film works are immediately identifiable -- blending S&M, punk-rock, documentary and fetish styles into a sensibility that is at once bold and revolting, sensual and ugly.His photographs are more intriguing than his films, which suffer from too much emphasis on violence, oftimes bad acting, and shaky shot selection (and I'm not referring just to the handheld style). It's surprising how beautiful some of Kern's photographic subjects appear very often, just because his style has a complete lack of pretension that can be inviting. Granted, all the violent imagery, gun fetishes, and people (usually women) in compromising positions gets repetitive. But Kern is one artist you can pick out from the crowd on the spot, and his toughness can be welcome in a world of airbrushes and perfect bodies and makeup. You could even argue some of these subjects look more human in this style than in any fashion magazine!
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