Richard Kern, who now exclusively shoots photography, made a name for himself in New York 20 years ago creating shocking films such as the short film Fingered (1986) starring Lydia Lunch. They were as much acclaimed by fans of his work as it was criticised and condemned by others who objected to the intensely violent and sexually explicit content.
Looker, the most recent of Kern's published books, features candid, verging on voyeuristic shots of young, often nude girls. The Peeping Tom element to all of Kern's work is his signature. When challenged that this particular aspect of his work could be seen as somewhat creepy by people who see an older man taking sexual pictures of young-looking girls Kern shrugs. "Too bad", he says.
"It's creepy but people certainly look at it. It's no worse than what you get in advertising like those Calvin Klein ads where there's some guy and a girl in their underwear, totally wet. And they are on billboards in Times Square"
So who are these young naked girls that actively seek to be shot by Kern? Many of Kern's models actually approach him directly via email although he has sought out some himself during "dry spells".
"There was a point when I put ads on Craigslist a couple of times and I got two really good models that way.
One girl I got turned out to be a writer on one of the best writing programs in the states right now, she has just graduated, and I only found out after."
Given the sexual element to Kern's images many people assume there must be something sexual going on at the shoots.
"What's really funny is that people think it's this like crazy wild lifestyle when you're on tour but it is like a job. Girls show up and I don't know what they're thinking but I want to get as good stuff as possible. Sometimes they're thinking its going to be something sexy. Sometimes I'm thinking that. Sometimes I don't know what they're thinking. They have an idea and it's either like that or it's not but I don't know what that is."
Having photographed girls all over the word Kern says that he has noticed no cultural difference between the girls themselves; it is a certain universal type of girl that is drawn to modeling nude for a stranger.
"One of the girls said she thought it was going to be really sexy and that she was surprised she didn't get turned on. But then some other girls say that they get really turned on and I'm like really? I mean I can understand, my wife likes that too, running around in front of guys. She's a flirt."
Kern believes that the voyeuristic nature of his work only mirrors the way in which society too has become increasingly interested in the lives of others. The rise of social networking websites and celebrity gossip magazines which invite people to pry into each other's lives encourages our voyeuristic tendencies and as a result personal privacy is becoming something of an out-dated concept.
"I was telling my wife to please do not put stuff on Facebook, like don't put any locations on Facebook like where you are or what you're doing because people will follow that stuff and people get stalked. I was in France and I was telling someone that my kid has really long hair and he says, "Yeah I know, I saw on your wife's Facebook". I don't have any of that stuff."
The risque and often nude shots of young and even younger looking girls, although a little pervy to some, is just a job for Kern. The matter of fact way he says things like "up-skirt shots" as if it were some technical photography term seems to support this. His approach to what he does is strikingly businesslike.
"I had to stop shooting for porn magazines", he says, adding, "I don't even know how those magazines survive, why anyone would buy them".
This remark doesn't come from any moral standpoint against pornography per se. Kern simply means that since the introduction of the Internet there is little point of print pornography magazines. Kern's reasoning is, why pay for porn in a magazine when you get an unlimited supply for free online?
"I reached a certain level that once you reach you can't go past but after that the whole porn magazine industry collapsed anyway. Where before you could make maybe five grand a day shooting for porn mags it went down to like 800 dollars."
Provocative though Kern's photography may be, especially a new "school girls" project he is currently shooting for, along with another project which features girls smoking marijuana, Kern has never been more in demand for his photography work. He says,
"people come to me, I don't really look for it [work]".
"I get a lot straighter jobs now, people don't think that I'm going to like murder or rape them now. I get asked to do more of exactly what I know I can do really well".
The eternal question is however, is this because people's attitudes have changed and become more accepting of the kind of images Kern produces, or at the very least immune to them? Or is it just that his name is out there now and so as a result he is commissioned for more straightforward jobs on the basis that people know him and his work?
"A lot of it is people who knew me when I was making films and stuff, they grew older and grew up knowing the stuff I did and they are actually the people hiring me now. That happens sometimes."
Kern, who made his name in 80s New York with a succession of deliberately shocking films depicting drug-abusing, twisted characters in violent and sexually explicit scenes, admits it is much harder to establish yourself now as a professional photographer, especially using shock tactics the way he did.
"I did start out with shock value. A lot of artists do it to get spotted like Warhol did it and look at what Damien Hurst did."
These days, argues Kern, distinguishing yourself is much more difficult as society becomes more resilient to shock tactics. Like it or not, establishing yourself as a photographer has now become all about knowing the right people.
"It's mostly just fucking connections, like who you know. If I was 25 and if I went and hung out every night telling people that I was a photographer they would say "Do some work for me. I have this to shoot", and it just builds over time. "
"A lot of it has to do with networking now. I can think of a British photographer who is pretty big in the fashion world who gets a lot of work, two that I can think of, and I just know the way they work… I'd love to say it but I don't want to screw myself too much but they have ties to publishers, I'll say that."
Kern has only ever briefly studied photography as an elective course while at art school and learned the basics of photography from his father who was a newspaper photographer in his native North Carolina. He does not think studying a photography degree is entirely necessary. His advice on what young aspiring professional photographers should do is simple and it is hardly surprising:
"Just shoot and shoot. Like anything its practice, if you write you become a better writer. One thing university is good for is criticism. Its good sometimes, it helps and sometimes it makes you so pissed off that you go off and do your own thing and make something really good.
Not in school but the first film I made, I got so much shit for that film I was just like fuck you, fuck all of you."
For a photographer who admittedly made his name from "shock value" like others such as Warhol and Damien Hirst, who he says established themselves in the same way, where does that leave today's artists' ability to shock? The alarming use of sex, drugs and violence that defined Kerns early film work are not necessarily tame by present standards but there is certain immunity to those sorts of images in today's audiences.
What kind of images could possibly shock society now?
"There was one thing the other day I saw and thought I don't know about this. It was fucking Eminem's video for 3am in The Morning. The song is about taking pills and then he has a blackout and its 3am in the morning and he wakes up and doesn't know where he is. And there are bodies everywhere. The video keeps cutting to severed limbs and it's very convincing. I was showing my kid videos and he saw that one flash by and was like "I want to see that one". That's what the kids want to see."
As Kern recalls his last London show in 2001 at the ICA, "I was blown away by all the reactions I got that were negative. All sorts of bad stuff". But the smile creeping across his face suggests that at 55 the photographer who was attacked in critiques and even, on one occasion attacked physically for one of his films, still enjoys the notion that his work can provoke reactions from people.