From The Archives Of Richard Kern

I’ve long been a fan of the photography of Richard Kern, who does edgy erotic photography. Some of it’s explicit, or explicitly fetish, material; but a lot more is what I’d call “plain” art nudes, done in an indescribable way that makes them seem deeply kinky. Back in the pre-blog era, I sometimes used to make extra beer money buying books of his art postcards, separating them carefully, and then selling them individually on eBay (that was before eBay hired a Disney executive and went all “mid-twentieth-century prude” on everybody).

From time to time I get a low-key marketing email from Vice. [2018 explanation: Back in 2009, Vice was a website, not yet a television network.] The latest one alerted me to a Richard Kern feature called Archival Girls. It’s very simple: photos from Kern’s archives, with short captions by Kern about the models. This one is a nameless (as in, Kern forgot her name) stripper from San Francisco:

“This was another stripper from San Francisco. I don’t remember anything about her… Oh, wait. I do! My doctor at the time told me his marriage was breaking up. It turned out it was because he was having an affair with this girl I photographed. Total coincidence.”