Richard Kern knows New York better than any photographer living in America today. He made his name with in-your-face portraits of suicide girls, street punks, delinquents, girls with attitude who gaze back at his camera with sex and violence in their dark staring eyes.

Rebel with a Camera

Kern's controversial New York Girls was published to rave reviews and sold out within months. New York Girls was followed by a string of best-selling editions, dark, brooding, exhilarating books, some now being made available at the Kern Bookstore for the first time.

Kern's role as the counter-culture's leading photographer evolved from his work as an independent filmmaker. It is his knowledge of movie lighting and composition that give his portraits a feeling of an almost painful intimacy, a sense that behind the camera is someone who knows and understands the reality being portrayed.

As a fanzine publisher and filmmaker, Kern has always been reinventing the world and presenting it in an instantly-recognized style: sublime portraits of girls in audacious poses that bring a new understanding of female sexuality, empowerment and diverse pleasure.

Kern's intoxication in the presence of naked women is transferred to the viewer in dark, erotic, often unsettling images that imply that the camera is an extension of his own personality.