Richard Kern, New York Girls, Installation view

Management is pleased to present Richard Kern: New York Girls, in collaboration with No Agency New York.

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I’m 15 and I’m looking at a photo of a girl with a lizard on her face on the internet and I’m thinking it’s one of the coolest pictures. I’m finding her dirty black hair inspiring and I’m thinking about the kind of person I’m going to be. I’m lying in the dark talking on the phone with my internet boyfriend and I’m telling him I find this image compelling. He’s asking me if I’ve heard of NO WAVE music. I haven’t but I’m getting the impression that New York City is incredible. My internet boyfriend is also in high school and having domestic acrimony with his dad, in Philadelphia, where he lives. We “met” on a file sharing platform called “soulseek” but have never “met” in “real life”. We’re having phone sex on a landline, which is crazy. He mails me two DVDs and a book about snuff movies. One of the DVDs is called FACES OF DEATH and the other is called THE HARDCORE COLLECTION: THE FILMS OF RICHARD KERN. That girl with the lizard on her face is on the cover and in some of the movies as well. I’m only able to watch it once before my parents find it and throw it away. I’m yelling at my dad. I’m acting like that girl in the films of Richard Kern. In one of the movies she is killing her parents. I’m calling my internet boyfriend on the phone crying. One day I’m going to move to New York City and make snuff movies. One day I’m going to leave this town and go to college and watch every episode of a web series called SHOT BY KERN, which documents the nude photoshoots of Richard Kern and various sexy models. These girls are really incredibly sexy, European, etc. They’re brushing their teeth and the toothpaste is getting foamy in their mouths. This guy Richard Kern must be some kind of genius to get these girls to do this. I hope I get to meet him one day.

— Dasha Nekrasova

Richard Kern, photographer and filmmaker remains, first and foremost, a portraitist. For more than two decades Kern has sought to unravel and illuminate the complex and often darker sides of human nature. Kern makes the psychological space between the sitter, photographer and audience his subject. With his dry, matter of fact approach, he underlines the absurdity of truth and objectivity in photography while playing with our reliance upon taxonomies around sexual representation.

— Matthew Higgs

Kern is a regular contributor to Interview, The Face, Dazed, Numero, Vice and Purple and has published 28 books. His films and photographs have been exhibited at MOMA, The Whitney Museum and in more than 50 solo shows around the world. Kern lives and works in New York City.