*1943
A.k.a. Lawrence Donald Clark
Larry Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943. After graduation from Central High in Tulsa, Clark attended Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for two years. He was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam in 1966. Clark's groundbreaking first feature film, KIDS was released in 1995. Based on a story by Clark and Jim Lewis with a script by Harmony Korine, one of the several teenage skateboarders Clark befriended in New York City's Washington Square Park and later cast in his film. KIDS was controversial even before it's release, prompting the then Disney owned Miramax to remove its name from the film and release it privately. The film screened in competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and was a cause celebre at the Sundance Film Festival. Following the success of KIDS Clark directed three more features, Another Day In Paradise (1997), Bully (2001) and Ken Park (2002), before discovering the Latino skate punk kids of South Central Los Angeles who would comprise the cast of his most recent feature, Wassup Rockers (2006). Best known for his haunting depiction of teenage life on the edge in his photography volumes Tulsa (1971), and Teenage Lust (1983), Larry Clark remains a significant figure in contemporary art. His work is included in the photography collections of nearly every major museum, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum Of Comtemporary Arts in Los Angeles, and the Frankfurt Museum fur Moderne Kunst.