Most people know Richard Kern for his photos of New York Girls - pasty, perverted and agressive creatures with time on their hands and tatts just about everywhere else.
Model Release Part 1
Girls engaged in their mundane daily activities often appear more erotic than if they are staged in the studio with great lighting and all the care that goes into a major photoshoot.
That's certainly the impression you get from Richard's Kern's Model Release, an e-book so aptly titled because in these 40 startling photographs the models appear to be in that very state: released from the world of hassling a job or the rent to be themselves, just themselves, without props or poses.
There is no sense that any of the shots in the collection have been staged. If the girls portrayed here are aware of the camera, they certainly don't give that impression. They are in their own world, and we are voyeurs peeking through a crack in the wall.
There is a wonderful shot of a schoolgirl (at least she looks like a schoolgirl with a homework-strewn desk and a stack of CDs) who looks as if she has just arrived home and is showing her breasts to a neighbor across the hall. Kern has captured her pulling up her sweater and in her vague smile there is a look of defiance. The accompanying photograph shows her standing beside the bath in a pair of cheap cotton panties and dirty trainers; and there's another with her head literally buried in the toilet bowl.
Model Release is fun, in-your-face and the shots stay in your mind, lodged there like incomplete memories, and you can't help going back for a another look, for another chance to complete the picture.
