One of the most transgressive of American photographers, Richard Kern makes brazen portraits of enticing nude women. But if his photographs easily cross over into the world of pornography, they are distinguished from prosaic porn by their beauty and, more importantly, their treatment of voyeurism as a theme. As Kern once said, "the best part of anything is watching," and through his photographs, he not only seduces the viewer into looking but forces a subsequent recognition of his or her own voyeurism. This publication presents a new series of black and white photographs.

Cet ouvrage illustré de plus de 180 photographies en noir et blanc et en couleur retrace la carrière de Richard Kern, le plus sulfureux des photographes-cinéastes new-yorkais. De l'un de ses films super 8 notoirement obscène, John Waters a dit un jour: "Fingered, c'est le dernier film culte pour psychopathes de tout poil. C'est le meilleur film artistico-porno-punko-plouc de la planète, et je le passe toujours à mes amis tard dans la nuit pour les mettre en verve."

Literacy & language teaching.

Richard Kern is renowned for his underground films, and for his pithy remark "If the model is the exhibitionist then I am the voyeur." "The New York Times" has called his pornography-influenced images "uncommonly visceral instances of the so-called male gaze." Some folks just call them porn: his publication credits include the magazines "Barely Legal, Finally Legal, Tight, Candy Girls" and "Juggs." Kern was born in North Carolina in 1954, and has lived and worked in New York City for some 30 years. In the 80s, he produced a series of short films since recognized as the central works of the movement that has come to be called the Cinema of Transgression. In the 90s he moved back to still photography while occasionally directing music videos for performers like Sonic Youth and Marilyn Manson. He has shown his work around the world at venues including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the London Institute of Contemporary Art and New York's Feature, Inc. This is his tenth monograph, following titles including "Kern Noir, New York Girls" and "Model Release." It is the first to focus exclusively on his digital work.

From the origins of writing to today's computer-mediated communication, material technologies shape how we read and write, how we construe and share knowledge, and ultimately how we understand ourselves in relation to the world. However, communication technologies are themselves designed in particular social and cultural contexts and their use is adapted in creative ways by individuals. In this book, Richard Kern explores how technology matters to language and the ways in which we use it. Kern reveals how material, social and individual resources interact in the design of textual meaning, and how that interaction plays out across contexts of communication, different situations of technological mediation, and different moments in time. Showing how people have adapted visual forms to various media as well as to social needs, this study culminates in five fundamental principles to guide language and literacy education in a period of rapid technological and social change.

"Explores the world of voyeurism"--Book jacket.

Beyond traditional portraiture, Richard Kern's new works manifest a strong eroticism while incorporating the cinematic power of his earlier "Transgression" theme. His recent photographs with saturated color and stark, atmospheric lighting accentuate his pretty-but-not-perfect young nudes. Inspired, unique, and "real," his approach is as daring as ever in Soft. Still sticking with the "no airbrush" motto, Kern's unpretentious, honest photos draw the viewer in close. Kern's longstanding relationship with the "No-wave" scene, which incorporated music, performance, feminist art, and the punk lifestyle, is reflected and distilled in these photographs.