This book harkens back to the halcyon days of photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern’s youth. Edited by Jesse Pearson, editor of Nudity Today and Apology Magazine, Contact High couldn’t have a simpler premise--it’s all about naked girls smoking weed. This cheeky and playful collection of portraits recalls a time in Kern’s life when, he says, “I spent a lot of time with my friends smoking pot, listening to music, running around in the woods and sometimes swimming naked. Back then, when I was around a naked girl, weed was either about to be smoked or had been smoked.” In 1999, Kern met a model in Los Angeles who reminded him of the girls he used to smoke with back in North Carolina. So, seizing the moment, he “went down to Charleston to shoot her at her house and in the swamps around there. Her ambition at 18 years old was to open a head shop. She had a small gro-lite farm in her bedroom.” This carefree and sexy series of images from 1999 to the present is charged with an atmosphere of freewheeling, optimistic hedonism. Readers will undoubtedly get a real buzz from the beauty and sensuality of the images--perhaps tinged with a bittersweet hint of nostalgia for the sexy abandon of their own carefree youth.
Featured image is reproduced from Richard Kern: Contact High.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
GQ
Devin Friedman
Spend time at art-book stores and you'll keep seeing the same logo - PictureBox- on the coolest books. " I try to rediscover old artists and give exposure to new ones", says publisher Dan Nadel. Releases often include a small run of hand-signed or sketched-in editions: " It's an affordable way to get a one-of-a-kind."
In the introduction to his new monograph, Contact High, photographer Richard Kern writes, "When I was sixteen or seventeen (around 1970), I spent a lot of time with my friends smoking pot, listening to music, running around in the woods, and sometimes swimming naked. Back then, when I was around a naked girl, weed was either about to be smoked or had been smoked. In 1999, I met a model in LA who reminded me of the girls I used to smoke with back in North Carolina. I went down to Charleston, South Carolina to shoot her at her house and in the swamps around there. Her ambition at 18 years old was to open a head shop. She had a small grow-light farm in her bedroom. In the photos in this book, I was looking for that moment of youthful optimistic inebriation after which anything is possible." Featured image is "London" (2012). A related exhibition is on view at Feature gallery in New York from September 4 – October 12. continue to blog
Richard Kern will sign copies of Contact High, his riveting new book of photographs of naked girls smoking pot, at BOOKMARC, New York this Thursday, September 26, from 6-8PM. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 10.75 x 14 in. / 96 pgs / 90 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $29.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $39.95 GBP £25.99 ISBN: 9781939799043 PUBLISHER: PictureBox AVAILABLE: 9/30/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA EUR ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
This book harkens back to the halcyon days of photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern’s youth. Edited by Jesse Pearson, editor of Nudity Today and Apology Magazine, Contact High couldn’t have a simpler premise--it’s all about naked girls smoking weed. This cheeky and playful collection of portraits recalls a time in Kern’s life when, he says, “I spent a lot of time with my friends smoking pot, listening to music, running around in the woods and sometimes swimming naked. Back then, when I was around a naked girl, weed was either about to be smoked or had been smoked.” In 1999, Kern met a model in Los Angeles who reminded him of the girls he used to smoke with back in North Carolina. So, seizing the moment, he “went down to Charleston to shoot her at her house and in the swamps around there. Her ambition at 18 years old was to open a head shop. She had a small gro-lite farm in her bedroom.” This carefree and sexy series of images from 1999 to the present is charged with an atmosphere of freewheeling, optimistic hedonism. Readers will undoubtedly get a real buzz from the beauty and sensuality of the images--perhaps tinged with a bittersweet hint of nostalgia for the sexy abandon of their own carefree youth.
