Larry Clark: Tulsa

Exhibition Website

May 31 2019 - Nov 10 2019

World-renowned photographer/filmmaker Larry Clark was born and raised in Tulsa. From 1963 to 1971, he photographed the daily lives of his friends. He captured unforgettable images of sex, violence, and drug use alongside intimate moments of solitary contemplation. These images were collected in Clark’s legendary and controversial 1971 book, Tulsa.

These pictures launched both Clark’s career and a new style of photography marked by equal parts intimacy and objectivity. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.          

Whether or not you go, Tulsa, the book from which the exhibition is created, sparked immediate controversy across the nation. Its graphic depictions of sex, violence, and drug abuse in the youth culture of Oklahoma were acclaimed by critics for stripping bare the myth that Middle America had been immune to the social convulsions that rocked America in the 1960s. The raw, haunting images taken in 1963, 1968, and 1971 document a youth culture progressively overwhelmed by self-destruction -- and are as moving and disturbing today as when they first appeared. Originally published in a limited paperback version and republished in 1983 as a limited hardcover edition commissioned by the author, this seminal work of photographic art and social history is once again available to the general public.

Click to add this book to your collection: Tulsa

  • Photography
  • American
  • 20th Century
  • Culture / Lifestyle
  • Larry Clark

Exhibition Venues & Dates