Kern Noir (Naked?)
Born in 1954 in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, the turning point of Richard Kern's life happened one afternoon in 1971, when he was picked up by a carload of hot, young, scantily-clad  New York City glam girls while hitchiking after a day of skipping high school. He was captivated. The end result has been more than two decades of hard, sexually blunt work, starting with early projects like the Cinema of Transgression films made in collaboration with a crew of Lower East Side denizens Lydia Lunch, Nick Zedd, Sonic Youth, and Karen Finley. Kern's recent work has concentrated on the photography of women, and has appeared inHustlerandBarely Legal, as well as in the art monographsNew York GirlsandXX Girls.