Richard Kern has been a leading photographer for decades and this year, with new books, “Shot by Kern” from Taschen and his new book “Contact High” from Picturebox, he's demonstrated that he’s not slowing down. If you don’t know him from his photography, you might know him from his many films and music videos he shot for Sonic Youth, Marilyn Manson and many many others, some of which are available on his vimeo channel. There’s also the popular Vice show “Shot by Kern,” which documents his work and photo shoots.
“Contact High” is a book of photographs of stoned women. It’s also a book full of beautifully composed pictures and a great addition to any library and Kern was kind enough to spend some time talking with us about the book and his work.
ALEX DUEBEN: How did your new book Contact High come about?
RICHARD KERN: I shot a girl smoking pot in ‘97 and then I started shooting a couple more. Vice ran a story about it and they were publishing a few books and they asked me if I’d do the pot smoking book with them. Then they canned their book publishing arm and the book went to Picturebox. There’s something about girls smoking pot that’s really attractive to me and really gets me going–probably because I can’t smoke pot anymore. I just remember it from being a teenager. I said that in the book. After I was shooting this for about a year, girls would show up at the shoots and say, I want to smoke pot.
AD: When you were young, did you want to be photographer?
RK: No, I had no idea what I was going to be. I studied art and philosophy so photography was just the documentation part of it of the art process. When I went to school back in the seventies, they were just starting to teach people that everything must be documented. Now of course everything is over-documented. Photography was just a documentation tool or something to take a picture of girlfriend with.
When I got to New York, I started doing photography full time because I couldn’t build the giant sculptures I used to make. That was in the seventies. Then it just developed into this thing that I kept doing. Nude photography in particular was–as any person who shoots nude photos can tell you–a way to be around girls without their clothes on. Then it just turned into this occupation. [laughs] I was making music videos and movies and the photography was a sideline that turned into something else.
AD: Looking at Contact High, it’s very different from the work you made in the eighties.
RK: Well, you could pick a photo of a girl in Contact High and look back at a movie like You Killed Me First or even Fingered and you’ll see the same kind of humor in there. There’s a lot of funny photos in that book. It’s the same humor–back then it was just darker, I guess. I was younger and angrier. I’m not really angry anymore.
AD: I think that’s true, but your older work seems more consciously transgressive and trying to push certain boundaries and your recent books, Contact High especially, seem much more laidback.
RK: Well yeah. [laughs] Thirty, thirty-five years later. That early stuff was fueled by the Sex Pistols, the punk scene, and I thought of the films as a way to break down a lot of barriers.
AD: Your films are very punk rock and Contact High and some of your other recent work is very hippie.
RK: Exactly–but pot is very hippie and casual. It’s not a violent drug. [laughs] You don’t think of people getting stoned and going out and robbing banks and beating each other up. You think of people just laying back and relaxing.
AD: Your work is casual and I use the word intentionally because your work isn’t really documentary, but it’s a very specific approach that’s not pinup or porn, for example.
RK: Yeah, I gave all that stuff up. There’s a lot of documentation in my photos. It may not seem that way now, but I just know from experience that it’s going to be that way.
AD: Talk a little about your aesthetic in this work.
RK: As usual, I was just trying to make an interesting photograph each time. I’d have to look through the book to see if I actually succeeded. Like the cover shot. There was such a response to that I thought I should do more of this. When I shoot I generally have a list of things to shoot and at the very end of the list for each shoot was, get model to smoke pot. That was always on the end of the list because if you do it before, they’re wasted.
I wasn’t really aiming for anything except pretty pictures of girls smoking pot. Just to see that kind of look in someone’s face when they’re stoned. You don’t really see that. It probably does exist and I’m just not aware of it. There’s a movie that I talk about all the time, Blow Up, from the sixties. There’s a really great scene in that movie, a party scene in this giant London flat and it’s these long closeups of passing joints and getting stoned. I was like, wow, that’s five minutes of interesting film even though nothing’s happening. It’s just fun to watch. Again I’m looking at it as someone who doesn’t do it so I have to I can only yearn towards it.
AD: When you’re shooting, are you ever thinking making the photo or the subject look sexy?
RK: I’m not thinking of the sexy part. Sometimes I am. For example when I was doing the editing for this book Shot by Kern that came out from Taschen recently I knew that I had to have a lot of sexy photos. But a girl standing there naked is sexy. You don’t really have to do much to them. If you really try to make them look sexy, it’s like porn.
AD: And you’ve shot porn in the past.
RK: Yeah, in the good old days when you could make money at it. [laughs]
AD: You mentioned Taschen you’ve worked with Dian Hansen there. Jesse Pearson edited Contact High and you’ve worked with him before. What’s the role of an editor with a photo book?
RK: Well the first role is convincing the publisher to publish it. [laughs] That’s the main thing. And helping you narrow down photos. My selection of photos and their selection are often far far apart. I look at theirs and then I start thinking about it and it gives you a whole new insight into it. My wife is editor for Rizzoli now and I see her job and it’s not one I would want. You have to deal with bullshit from both sides–if the photographer or artist is not cooperative and then if the publisher is not cooperative–but Jesse and Picturebox were super easy to work with.
AD: Do you prefer shooting models or amateurs?
RK: I would have to say amateurs. If it’s for work, I would say models, but if it’s for myself amateurs generally are more enthusiastic. And the least, porn girls. [laughs] I shot some recently for my Vice show last year and forgot what it was like shooting porn girls. The amateurs in particular are like, this is fun.
AD: I’d imagine now people come in with a certain expectation of what’s going to happen because of the Vice show.
RK: They come in more willing because they can see on the Vice show that I’m not going to attack them. They’re not so worried about it. I shot two girls recently together and they said, this is really weird that you didn’t try to have sex with us. I was like, what? They said the last few guys they shot with tried to fuck us while we were shooting. I said, well, I don’t see you as sluts. They said, but we are sluts. [laughs]
AD: Are there any trends you’ve seen with the people you shoot in recent years?
RK: The first thing that comes to mind is girls starting growing their armpit hair back out–thank god. Bush hair came back. That’s an example of documentation. You can look at photos of girls from the eighties and they’ve got multicolored eye makeup and their hair is two feet high and blond and their tits are gigantic. It’s going to be obvious when the stuff comes from. That’s the main thing I notice–armpit hair. And I don’t even say “thank god,” it’s just something different. More realism, which I’m always for.
AD: Do you have a favorite series of photos that you’ve shot?
RK: Right now I’d say this recent project, Medicated, which I just wrapped up. There’s some photos in the Taschen book and Vice ran some. I just had a show in New York of them. I made a film. It had a bunch of different layers and it was about medicated teenagers. It was photographs with a point, which is hard to do.
AD: Where did that idea come from?
RK: From one of the models telling me she was all pumped up on her adderall and she was telling me how my assistant was pumped up on adderall and I’m like, what do you mean? I’m so far out of the drug culture these days I didn’t even realize how many people are on all kinds of medication. I started asking every girl I shot if she was on doctor prescribed medication and quite a few of them were.
AD: You shot a lot of people in this series. Were you amazed by this?
RK: Yes I was amazed–and then not amazed at the same time. I only got what I consider five to eight great photographs out of it. I have to shoot for like two years and get maybe five to eight photos I think are successful.
AD: As far finding those few photos, for Contact High, which is ninety-something pages, how many photographs did you take to get those photos?
RK: A lot. I started shooting in 2008, 2009. It was a lot of girls, a lot of pot smoking. There’s filler in the book, or what I consider filler. You have that in any book, stuff that doesn’t necessarily live up to my personal standards but lived up to the standards of the editors.
AD: Enough of the work in any book or exhibit is great, but some is just good enough?
RK: Yeah some photos really hit that mood and photos that don’t. That’s just my opinion.
AD: What photos in the book do you think really hit it?
RK: That cover shot. That really hits it on so many levels. That’s why it’s on the cover, probably. There’s lots of good photos here. I’d say three quarters of these I really like. Actually more than three-quarters as I’m just flipping through it. A lot of times it has to do with the model. There’s a photograph of a girl wearing a cross and has badly dyed hair. She’s a British girl and I think it’s a great photograph. The cover shot was in Mexico City and she turned out to be this fantastic model. She was in Shot by Kern, too.
AD: To get those three photos you took of the three young women on the beach, how many did you take? Dozens? Hundreds?
RK: Probably around five hundred shots. [laughs] I’m just there clicking away. It depends. The girl in Mexico on the cover–I wish I had shot more. Nothing anywhere else in the shoot comes anywhere close to that. I wish I had another shot of her that was as good.
AD: What does it take–just find the right model, create the right atmosphere and try to hit the shutter in that right split second?
RK: Yes–and then you either get it or you don’t. There’s a lot of times when I didn’t get it. Sometimes you can’t get it because the place doesn’t work. It just doesn’t look like someone would actually be getting stoned there. I can’t quite explain it, but the look, the background, everything has to be happening. Like that British girl I was talking about. For me her head was in the window, you can see outside and where it is. The window frame is making a nice frame of her head, her eyes are just completely glassed over from smoking.
A lot of times you’re just shooting and shooting and hoping for something and you’re surprised when you look at the stuff later.
AD: Does that happen a lot?
RK: Fuck yeah. A lot of times you think you got it, but you didn’t.
AD: Why do you still shoot women? What keeps you interested?
RK: Well I do shoot guys, but for the books it’s always girls. I don’t know what keeps me interested–it’s just what I do. When I get something like the Medicated series I get interested more. I’ve been doing a lot more video lately. I’m a little more interested in that at the moment.
AD: You hadn’t done much video until recently.
RK: Since 2010 I’ve done a ton more, but before that I hadn’t done it in years. I’ve done a bunch of music videos that I like. It’s been a lot more fun.
AD: So you’ve finished Medicated, you had two books come out this year, you’re making some more video. Do you have any plans or thoughts for what’s next?
RK: No. I’m in a period where I just finished one documentary, two music videos, two books, and I’m sitting here trying to think of what is interesting.