Richard Kern won’t be winning an Academy Award anytime soon. Or an Independent Spirit Award, for that matter. You won’t hear his name in a list alongside Jim Jarmusch, Paul Thomas Anderson, and John Waters. But he is, nonetheless, a cultural icon and a purveyor of the cinema of transgression (read Marc Savlov’s 2004 interview with Kern, “Transcending Transgression”). Beginning in the Eighties as an erotic filmmaker shooting people like Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins, Kern is probably best known in record stores as the man who created the cover to Sonic Youth highlight EVOL.
Throughout the last three decades, Kern has branched out into music videos (SY’s “Death Valley 69,” King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”), art shows, and zines, but he always kept at least one, um, member in erotic photography. Or in the case of the 280 glossy pages of his new photo book, Action (Taschen Books, $39.99), straight-up pornography.
And no, there’s nothing immoral or unethical about it. Kern’s photographs are beautifully shot and executed and oftentimes quite interesting: A (very) young woman squats down innocently and partially clothed grasping a trio of perfectly white eggs; another chews on a packet of birth-control pills while laying statically on a rumpled bed. The contrast is humorous and ironic. There’s no doubt that Kern has the talent.
There’s also no doubt that he loves young women, pantyhose, feet, and, occasionally, bowls of urine. Transgression, all right. His photography isn’t for everyone – definitely not for the prude at heart – and if you have any aversion to self-pleasure, this isn’t your cup of aphrodisiac tea.
But despite Kern’s status as the king of photographing natural nudes and punk rock strippers, Action’s pull is in its bonus DVD, Extra Action, an hourlong set of amateur shots of sucking (inanimate objects, for the most part), insertion (ditto), and masturbation. However, the entire film is soundtracked by Thurston Moore, the man who helped launch Kern’s porny career.
Moore’s involvement brings Extra Action out of the free-website realm and into that cinema of transgression by sound alone. He juxtaposes pubescent, naked girls with industrial screeches and blasts. He makes a dirty scene beautiful with acoustic guitar and whispers. He adds screams where they shouldn’t be and puts grunts where there are smiles. Without Moore’s music, this would be a DVD for freshmen to hide under their mattresses until their parents go to bed.
There’s something to be said also for the image of Thurston Moore sitting in his living room, Kern porn on big-screen TV, with a guitar and a keyboard. Of course Thurston watches porn, right? He’s as subversive as they come. Or at least he once was. But recording an original soundtrack for one? That’s funny.
This article appears in February 1 • 2008.