NEW YORK – As a young, artistic rebel growing up in Tulsa in the 1960s, Larry Clark hung out with a group of friends who were defiantly open in their embrace of drugs, guns, petty theft and frank sexuality.

With a camera always close at hand (his mother was a popular commercial photographer specializing in baby portraits and dog show pictures), Clark methodically chronicled his friends’ raw, anti-social behavior in stark black-and-white photographs.

Those became the notorious content of “Tulsa, “ a harrowing, groundbreaking 1971 photo book that quickly earned cult status, established Clark as an enfant terrible on the underground art scene and set the foundation for future cutting-edge work as a boundary-pushing artist and filmmaker.

Clark (whose photos have exhibited internationally and whose controversial films include “Kids,” “Bully” and the banned-in-Australia “Ken Park”) recently uncovered a long-forgotten reel of 16mm film footage that coincides with his nascent work on “Tulsa.” At the time he was photographing friends – and participating in their debauchery – he was also toting round a rented Bolex camera to shoot live footage of their activities.

That 64-minute silent reel, titled “Tulsa,” was first exhibited at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in a retrospective exhibition of Clark’s work titled “Larry Clark, Kiss the past hello.” More recently it has been on display for the first time in the U.S. at New York’s Luhring Augustine Gallery, 531 W. 24th St. (its exhibition ends Feb. 5).

The film, shot mostly in 1968, gives rare insight into Clark’s early interest in filmmaking and directing, even as it provides a startling perspective on his artistic process in capturing on film a gritty subculture of youth, drugs and sex that has defined so much of the artist’s work.

That work has won both acclaim and condemnation and marked Clark among the most influential photographers of his time. As gallery literature explains of “Tulsa’s” lasting artistic impact:

“Taken in three protracted series between 1963 and 1971, the Tulsa photographs combine the documentary style and narrative sequencing of a Life magazine photo essay with startling intimacy and emotional intensity. The graphic and controversial subject matter, the seemingly illicit nature of the viewer’s engagement, the remarkable low-light photography and the restrained editorial pacing distinguish the extraordinary new style of subjective documentary that these pictures announced. But more than that, the pictures and the book were an extension of Clark’s life.”

- Dennis King

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