Well, you guys have just sat through an hour and four minutes of quite intense viewing
experience.
That footage was shot over 40 years ago and hasn't really been seen, well it hasn't been
seen in the UK ever, it's the first time it's been shown.
It hasn't been seen at all in all these years, except in Paris last month.
So that was the first time it was shown publicly, it's also been on show in New York.
But how did that footage, how did that footage get, firstly get shot, like how did you come
to make that footage?
And then how come it hasn't been seen for so long?
Those of you who know the Tulsa book, I started photographing my friends in like 1962.
And I did a lot of work in 63 and I was drafted in the Army and I was in Vietnam and I came
back.
And I continued to photograph my friends and I wanted to make a film.
So I got a hold of a bolex which was a wind of 60 millimeter camera for a few days and
I started filming.
And I realized that you couldn't really make a film, make like a one-man film because it
was only me because what I find interesting about the film is the people in the film,
that's me.
And when I see the film today, I say, gee, that's me.
People think of me in different ways, but that's me.
And so when I did the book in 71, I took some film strips from the film and I really had
no use for the film.
And so I put it on a shelf and it's been sitting there all these years.
And last year I thought about it and I said, gee, I haven't seen this film since then.
And when I did the book, Tulsa, I used some film strips.
And my first thought was being like an old guy.
I said, gee, how can I get a 60 millimeter projector to look at the film?
Serious.
And then I realized, wait a minute, you can have this transferred to like a DVD.
So I took it in and I had it transferred and I took it home and I put it like on the 40
inch flat screen and I'm watching it and I'm saying, Jesus, man, it's all there.
Everything basically is in this film from 68.
So that's where it comes from.
So I decided to show it.
And how was that, that must have been quite an interesting experience watching it again.
I mean, I assume that a lot of these people, your friends are no longer with us.
They've passed away, most everybody in the film and I'm watching it and I'm seeing my
friends come to life and I'm just going, oh my God, oh my God, it's all there, it's all
there.
So I was quite shocked by it.
And that's like the truth, that's like how it happened.
And like I should say, I'm a totally disorganized person or artist, like all my work.
Like I have like vintage old prints, stuff that now is worth money and stuff, just in
boxes and scattered around in trunks and just with dust on it.
So that's kind of the way that I am.
I've been trying to get organized for 50 years.
And every day I think I'm going to get organized now, I'm going to get organized, I'm going
to archive everything, I'm going to get someone to help me, I'm going to catalog everything.
Never happened.
I think a lot of photographers can associate with that feeling, I think I can imagine.
But Tulsa is a series of 50 photographs, taken over 10 years.
So I assume there's a lot of editing gone into that.
And then what's the kind of role of the edit within your work, because I think there's
a lot of editing that is in camera editing that happens in the film that you're constantly
aware of.
Well, it's interesting because I'd never made a film before, I'd never edited and I'm
actually doing some editing in camera.
And this is just from watching films when I was a kid, I guess watching John Wayne
movies, the stuff in Oklahoma.
When I did the book Tulsa, I think one of the secrets of the book is in the editing.
Because photographers fall in love with their photographs.
When you see photo shows, I used to see exhibitions of photographs and they always showed too
much.
They were so in love with their pictures, you'd see a great picture of another one, another
one, another one that echoed like the last one.
And I think one of the secrets of the Tulsa book is the editing is very ruthless.
So there are photographs from that time that are great photographs, that probably I love
these photographs more than any other photographs, but they didn't fit in the story.
I always wanted to be a storyteller, I always wanted to be a filmmaker.
So I think the most successful work in film, and like a book like Tulsa is, you have to
be ruthless, you have to kill the ones you love to make it work, to tell the story.
So images from Tulsa or images that were taken during that period have appeared in other
guys' in other works.
So those original photographs kind of have been...
It was all about telling the story.
I always wanted to be a storyteller.
When I was a kid, I think I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted
to be almost anything but a photographer.
And I was a photographer by accident, I think, when I was 12 years old, my mother got a job
photographing babies, going door to door, making home appointments to photograph the
child of the baby in the home.
It was called kidnapping.
And like she would drive to all the small towns in Oklahoma and Kansas with a collar
with someone to knock on doors, and you would drive into these small towns and you would
see who had like diapers outside, like hanging on the clothesline because it was clotheslines
back then, or you would go to the church and talk to the preacher and say, who has new
babies in town, then you would go knock on the door and say, oh, the preacher told me
that you have a little daughter named Deborah, could I see her?
And you would talk your way into the house and the husband was at work in the factory
or somewhere, construction, and you would talk to the housewife who was bored in there
with her kid, talk them into letting you photograph the baby, and then you'd come back a week
later with a panel of six, five by sevens, and you'd sell them to them for 10.95.
And so I was forced to help my mother when I was a kid doing this, and I was like 14,
15 years old, and I stuttered very badly, and was skinny, and I was like a typical teenager
like that, very, very low self-esteem, and I had to go in and act like a clown and make
the baby laugh, and like put stuffed animals in my head, and they'd fall up and go, uh-oh,
and the baby would laugh, and my mother would take the picture, right?
So it was very embarrassing, but it put a camera in my hand, and I never thought of
doing anything, I never thought of photography as anything but making baby pictures.
Now around that same time, when I was almost 16, I started this secret life of shooting
and fetamine, it wasn't even called speed then, taking drugs, which is another story
about how that happened, but anyway, so I was speeding my ass off, and stuttering worse
than ever, I could hardly talk, and having to go and work and make baby pictures wasn't
funny, wasn't funny, and so I knew that I had to get out of Oklahoma, and so when I
was able to get out of Oklahoma, my parents, I was able to go to a commercial photography
school, and they thought that I was going to come back and take over the family business,
but I went to a commercial photography school that was in the basement of an art school,
and I was already hip with drugs, it was rock and roll, because rock and roll started when
I was 12 years old, and I liked rhythm and blues, and I used to go over to the black
part of town, which was not called the black part of town by the way, and so I was kind
of hip soon anyway, I started hanging out with the artist, sculptors, painters, and I got
a girlfriend who was a painter, who was very disturbed, I was always drawn to the craziest
girls, and I realized that I could use photography for something else, and I said gee, am I seen
in Oklahoma, I've never seen that photograph, I have this secret life, I'm going to go back
and photograph it, so that's kind of how it started, just like that.
And then, so there's this kind of opposition, I suppose, between the edit, there's kind
of like a really selected set of images, but often are taken kind of by chance, so there's
this combination of chance and edit that kind of work together, that you're in this situation
and kind of viewing, like participating in the...
Participating, you know, I'm like one of those guys, those are my friends, plus it was a
secret world, back then this was secret, this is America in the 50s, this is President Eisenhower,
this is when this wasn't supposed to be happening.
There were no drugs in America, there were no...
We were talking about that earlier, there was no drugs, there was no child abuse, there
were no parents who were drug addicts or alcoholics and beat their children up, and there was
no incest in America, but it was all there, and I saw it, like every day I would let go
to junior high school, and I would see this, so I knew about this world, and I started
making photographs too, because I said, why can't you show everything?
Because I read books, you know, and I said, why can't you show everything?
Why can't you show this world?
Why can't you show this life?
So my motivation for making these photographs was to show things that couldn't be seen, and
I think through my whole career, and career was a very dirty word for me, to show things
that you weren't supposed to see, the secret world that you weren't supposed to see, people
and their lives that you weren't supposed to see, so that's kind of what started it.
And how was that received?
How easy was it to get Tulsa produced, the book, for instance?
Well, when I finally decided, I photographed a lot in 62, 63, and then I went to the Army,
I came back, I photographed in 68, and then in the film in 68, and then in 1971, I decided
to go back and finish it, because I had this record through all these years, and in 71,
when I went back to finish it, I knew the world so well that I knew what I needed to
finish the story, and so nothing's set up, but I knew certain things would happen.
I knew there would be this sexist violence, that these things would happen.
I didn't know when, but I knew that I would be ready.
So I was aware that when they were going to happen that I was going to be there.
So I went back and actually finished it fairly quickly, like in a matter of a few months.
So you knew exactly what you needed, you were kind of going back?
Yes.
I knew the areas that I didn't have work of, and I knew that it was going to happen, and
I didn't know how, what it was going to look like, but I was going to be ready.
So going back a little bit, you were saying that you studied commercial photography, but
it was in an art school.
It was in an art school, so I immediately, I was, I like, you know.
I was a rebel.
I wasn't going to like, you know, take retouching classes, which they had, and do like the regular
studio kind of portraits, and...
But how did that, I mean, how did that commercial education kind of, did you just rebel against
it and kind of...
It gave me two years to do nothing but photography, and to mix my own chemicals, and to make,
and to use, and to try everything, and to be in the dark room, and to photograph everything,
and do nothing but work on photography, nothing, and learn everything about it, backwards and
forwards, technically upside down, backwards.
I like mix my own chemicals.
I got a job with the one hip commercial portrait photographer in Milwaukee, Walter Scheffer.
And way back then, all the, when someone took their family in to be photographed, it was
all these corny, lit, you know, kind of, you know, he photographed by natural light.
He would do settings by natural light, so he taught me about that.
Plus I was exposed to the all great photojournalists from Life Magazine.
Eugene Smith was my favorite.
And he was a great photographer, and he worked for a weekly magazine.
But he would want to go deeper.
He would want to photograph someone for a year, six months, or two years, to get the
truth he called it, the truth, the truth, the truth.
And he would write these diatribes about, you know, why can't I do this, and why can't
I do that?
And you can't, because you worked for a weekly magazine who wanted to work every week.
And so he quit Life Magazine and started a project called Pittsburgh, where he was going
to photograph the whole city.
He was going to do a portrait of a city, and he spent a few years doing that.
He never quite finished it.
He's obviously a kind of strong influence.
Yeah, you know, you know, plus it was about light.
When I worked with Walter Scheffer, he used to photograph the theater at Marquette University.
And he taught me stuff about shooting into the light.
And back then, that was not what you were supposed to do.
You weren't supposed to shoot into the light.
And he would shoot into the light for all this dramatic effect.
And if you look at the Tulsa book, you see the lights were so many times.
I'm shooting into the light because of the drama.
It's like someone's sitting in a chair, and it's a really dramatic photograph.
But all he's doing is sitting in the chair.
And the reason is because of the light.
And so I was taught about that.
Plus, I was hanging out with painters, and like learning about compositions from painters.
Did you ever paint?
Have you ever, like, as that of a...
I painted a few...
I had a girlfriend who was a painter, and I painted a little bit, but it wasn't good.
But you've used collage in your work a lot.
And you said in Tulsa there was the film strips, and you've kind of...
You've done more than photography and film making.
Well, yeah, I started doing collages because it was a different way of telling stories.
And I wanted to be a filmmaker.
And collage was a different way of telling stories.
And when I got ready to make films...
My first film was in 1994, I eased my way into that by trying to find different ways
to tell stories, by doing collages, by doing different things like that.
Which was preparation for making film.
Because I was totally bored with photography, I thought I'd done everything I could do.
And I was seeing everything in, like, double-paid spreads, because I'd done the books.
And I wanted to break away from that, so that kind of got me into film.
And at the show at Simon Lee, which opens, I think, Thirsty, there's a work called 1992,
where I wanted to see if I could set up photographs.
So I photographed a kid doing stuff that I'd read about in papers, you know, like Teenage
Suicide and all these things that we'd read about.
So this was a series that you produced from a, there's a newspaper article about autoerotic
asphyxiation.
Is that correct?
Were kids...
Yeah, yeah, that and Teenage Suicide and other stuff.
And I did a series of collages about that.
And then I did this work to see if I could set things up so I could make film.
I said, and that was the first time you'd staged your film?
The first time that I'd staged it.
And it wasn't that successful, but it's interesting in that way that it was part of the process
of making film.
And then when I was printing it, I was looking for the great photograph, because that's what
photographers do.
You know, photography is about failure, you make a hundred photographs, you take a hundred
photographs to get one good one, or you take a thousand photographs to get one good one.
So when I was printing, I was thinking, you know, what if I printed every single picture
that I took of this kid in sequence, I would be totally naked because I'm showing everything.
I'm showing everything a photographer doesn't want to show.
Photographers don't want to show their failures.
They don't want to show their contact sheets.
So that work is about showing everything, which is kind of, which is kind of against photography
back then.
But anyway, that's what started the film with Jumping Around.
We are.
But so this, and would you describe 1992 as a collage?
It's not really a collage, it's just, well, I guess it is, and, you know, in like technical
terms it would be.
The other collages could be.
But it was a breakthrough.
Yeah.
The other collages are about telling stories in different ways.
The other collages are just different ways to tell stories to kind of get me into making
a film, which was all very important to me starting making a film.
One of the things that, I mean, I saw yesterday, I saw you installing for the first time I
had seen the collages.
And what impressed me very much about them is that they're incredibly filmic, but they
also allow you to kind of time travel through the work as well because you're including
original vintage prints in them, pages from magazines, notes from people.
My mother's photograph.
Your mother's photograph is.
Of animals.
She used to dress up animals for fun, you know.
When I first went to, and it was so embarrassing because she was always, she was like, she
would take like 10 dogs and put them in a classroom and have them like students with
a dunce cap on the teacher.
She would do Christmas things of a dog as Santa Claus and all the dogs as reindeer and stuff.
And that's what she did for her fun, for her art.
So I included some of those.
And you've kind of reclaimed those in a way.
You showed some of them in Paris as well.
I always wanted to have a show of my mother's photograph, who was when I was doing the Tulsa
photographs, she was doing these kind of photographs.
And so it was very interesting to be able to do that, to be able to show those.
Something you just said about the 1992 and about showing, photographers kind of not wanting
to show their kind of mistakes, I mean, I'm really interested in this kind of, within
photography, I think it's quite, it's a very competitive industry and a very competitive
medium, partly because I assume there's something about that you all are working in some ways
with the same, you're working with the same mediums, it's a very restricted format.
How do you feel in terms of how your work has influenced other people and how you've
managed to carry on doing the Larry Clark kind of thing whilst other people have taken
your references and used them in different ways?
How do you feel about the competition aspects?
Well, it's not really a competition for me, it's that throughout the years I've had so
many people come up to me and say that they were inspired by my work and that's why they
became photographers from seeing my work and also filmmakers saying that I've seen your
work and it just makes me want to go make film, makes me want to work.
So there is that that I've inspired a lot of people and a lot of people in fashion,
which is not my fault, but I used to always say this has nothing to do with me, you know,
nothing to do with me at all and I was just kidding, no, there's nothing to do with me.
But I had a girlfriend who told me, she said, you know, how many people can inspire people
you should embrace this and be very happy about it, I went, oh, okay, that's cool.
But you don't feel part of this, you don't feel a pressure?
I feel good about it now, you know, that I've done it, you know, but I've taken a lot of
hits of it, you know, like when the fashion world started doing heroin chic, where they
took my photographs, which were, you know, pure and started doing stuff and selling clothes
and all this, but they were inspired by me, you know, so.
What do you mean when you say that your photographs were pure, what do you mean in kind of?
They were taken for no commercial purposes at all, they were taken for me and they were
taken to show the world and to show these people and to show people that you wouldn't
see otherwise, you know, from Tulsa, like all the way through the films, through kids,
which was about the secret world of kids, through What's Up Rockers, which was about
these 14-year-old Latino kids in South Central where no white people go and everybody's afraid
of them and they're just kids trying to be kids and just showing these worlds that you
wouldn't see otherwise, not to make a dime, you know.
Have you come under pressure to, I mean, have the fashion industry approached you very often?
Have you been?
Yeah.
And there's been times when you, have you shot commercial work?
Very, very few times, though, for friends.
I've done it as a favor for friends and it's always been a disaster because I just don't
care.
Because you won't compromise what you do.
Yeah, you know, I'm just not interested, it's just, you know, there's nothing wrong
with it.
There's nothing wrong with, I mean, I have some friends, I know Bruce Webber, I know
Stephen Klein and her Calvin Klein, there's nothing wrong with what they do, it's great.
Marilyn Mark, a photojournalist, you know, I mean, photojournalism, all that stuff, it's
all great.
It's just, the basic thing is I can't do it.
I just can't, you know, it's not like I'm better than them, you know, I'm just pure artist,
I can't, I just can't do that shit, you know, it's just that thing.
What stops you, what is it, is it a moral code?
I can't do it, yeah, yeah, you know, I was talking to an old girlfriend on the telephone
and she says, what have you been doing?
I said, well, I never sold out.
And she said, gee, gee, you never heard that anymore.
Because this is from the 60s, this is like, you know, early, early, early.
Because everything has changed so much, you know, it's all about money now.
Everybody thinks they have to be rich, you know, they have to have a few million dollars
by the time they're 22.
Everybody is a photographer now.
Everything is seen.
The internet is the biggest thing.
So everybody sees everything and everybody documents everything and nowadays people go
out and they go to a party and they know there's going to be sex, blood, violence, you know,
drugs, you know, all this stuff is going to happen.
And it's all photographed.
So it becomes, if it's not documented, did it even happen?
You know, and that's kind of the way it is now.
So it's a different world.
I'm not saying my world was better, it was just different, you know, it was just different.
I remember that it was such a shameful thing, you know, you know, we knew drugs were bad.
We knew that, you know, it was funny because in the 60s, you get to 67, 68, 69, 68 anyway,
I started thinking drugs were good, you know, and I already knew drugs were not good.
We already knew that this is, this is crazy, man.
These people think that, you know, that this is okay because when Tulsa came out in 1971,
the big drug thing happened, 68, 69, the hippie thing started happening in New York and California.
And by 71, it had gone into the provinces.
It was kind of in middle America then, and Tulsa came out in 71, and it was a record
of the whole drug thing, what happens.
And so it came out in the middle of it.
America had not gone from here to here, Tulsa goes from here to here.
America was in the middle, and when Tulsa came out, that's why it was so shocking to people,
because it was already a record of what was going to happen, and that happened.
We all know what happens now.
So when you asked me the question about what do I think about people like Ryan McGinley
or Dash Snow or some of the people who followed in my footsteps, and I was a big hero, you
know, and they wanted to hang out, and then it was already, you know, this is going to come to no good end, you know, no good end.
Dash Snow, who I think was the best of a lot, and I like Dash a lot.
And I knew what was going to happen to him, because he used to come to me and, you know,
and like, you know, say, how can I stop this, how can I get out of it, you know, and that's very difficult.
I mean, you're, because your work's often been accused of glamorizing these things.
I think people, just by depicting it, I think people feel that it gives some permissions
for these things to carry on, but from the kids and everything.
Well, my answer to that is, is a pregnant girl with a needle in her arm, is that glamorizing it?
Come on, that's not glamorizing it, but, you know,
It's a pregnant girl with a needle in her arm shot in the most beautiful way.
She's framed in this stunning, and she looks almost transcendental.
And the people in Tulsa look beautiful.
They look like movie stars, because they're my friends.
And I'm photographing them.
And if you're photographing your friends and you bring back pictures of them where they don't look good,
then they're like, I want you to photograph them anymore.
So, that's a big point, because they were seeing, I assume they were seeing everything, not just in Tulsa.
So there's that of photographing what's going on and being aware of the light.
Now, like photojournalists are concerned with the moment.
They don't care what people look like.
They want the moment you're shot, the moment this happens, the moment this happens.
Because I was trained to photograph babies and make them look good,
and if they don't look good, you don't get paid.
I was able somehow to photograph people doing whatever they're doing,
but at the same time, when the light is right, when they're looking a certain way.
Now, that's not dishonest, because we all look that way.
You can photograph people doing something where the light's bad,
or you can photograph them doing the same thing when the light's good.
I'm not setting it up, I'm just recognizing.
I'm able to get the carte basins decisive moment at the same time that the light is right,
because I was trained that way.
I was taught about light and shadow and how it dramatizes the moment, like the movies.
And I was raised in movies, too.
So all that came together in a certain way.
I was telling Lizzie earlier that it was such a secret world that I was living in
that when I came to New York and I saw Chelsea Girls, which is Andy Warhol's film,
and they're doing drugs and they're doing all this stuff,
and they're doing it for the camera.
And I was shocked.
I said, they know better, because they were doing it for the camera.
They were playing through the camera, so it was such a difference for me.
And there was a break there.
I was doing it before it became something to do, something to show off, to show off.
And it went from like Warhol and Chelsea Girls and those kind of films to Dash Snow,
to early Ryan McGillian before he became a commercial photographer.
I know Ryan.
I can say that he's my friend, and I've noticed that he was a kid, a skate kid.
And his early work was really great and out there.
And now he's just a commercial photographer, because he's doing it for money.
And you can see the difference in his pictures.
He sold out.
But Dash didn't sell that.
It's a good thing that Ryan sold out, because he's alive, probably.
And Dash didn't sell that, but he's dead as a doiner, you know?
There's all these contradictions and all these, you know, it's life, and it's interesting,
I think.
Absolutely.
One of the things we haven't touched on is the fact that we very often take images and
films of teenagers, and for me, teenagers kind of occupy this, they're kind of mutants.
They're half adults, half children, and I think one of the reasons you must be fascinated
with them is because of that.
And I think one of the other things about them is that they live completely in the moment.
And as a photographer, you've had to live in the moment.
And are you still managing to do that?
You're still managing to...
Boy, it's hard, you know.
To be in the moment.
Not get bogged down.
But it's a very interesting question, because I think that the fascination is living in
the moment, is so many of the kids are able to live in the moment, they're living for
right that moment, that I think that's probably the best way for us all to live, and it gets
more and more difficult.
I think that's what it does, especially when you have kids of yourself, kids of your own.
Anyway, I'm really grateful to Larry for spending some time with us this evening and for letting
us show Tulsa.
It was an amazing film from 1968.
Thank you very much.
And thank you all for doing this.
Thank you.
