95 CENSURE : ADOLESCENCE ET TRANSGRESSION (SEXE, DROGUE, VIOLENCE…) Larry Clark, Tulsa, 1971 ; Teenage Lust, 1984 Virtually all the photography and films of Larry Clark, blatantly provocative imagery depicting counter-culture teenage drug abuse, sex and violence – in which he himself partakes – have been controversial. His book of photographs Tulsa (Lustrum Press, New York, 1971), became a cuIt object but was not re-issued for many years because of a lawsuit. During the mid 1970's, he was granted an Imprimatur of Excellence grant of $5,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA. He used this grant money to pay the lawyers who were trying to keep him out of jail for several drug and violence related offences, including shooting someone in the arm and drunk driving. ln 1984, with financial assistance from the NEA, he produced his second book, Teenage Lust, which was even more disturbing than the first. Ironically, selling this NEA-sponsored book became illegal, a fact which made it all the more valuable. His independent film Kids (1995) released at the Sundance Film Festival, was so scandalous and successful that it enabled him to easily seek funds for a new (mainstream Hollywood) movie Another Day in paradise (1998), featuring Melanie Griffith and James Woods, from which an entire scene was censored. ln the words of Larry Clark during an interview about the film, " The scene started and she (Sid, the character played by Melanie Griffith) was talking, and you get a really good sense of her past and where she's coming from, and the scene ends in a rough sex scene that she initiates. And this scene the censors said no to. " Dena Ellen Cowan, " Censored ", Exit, n°8, novembre, décembre 2002 – janvier 2003, p.156
Larry Clark, sans titre, tiré de la série Tulsa, 1971