19 January 1943, is an American photographer, filmmaker, writer, and producer. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he learned photography through his mother’s portrait photography business, assisting from an early age. After studying at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, he served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War before returning to photograph the people and environments he had known in his youth.

He first gained recognition with the photobook Tulsa (1971), a photographic document of his friends and acquaintances in Oklahoma, depicting drug use, violence, and everyday life from within the community itself. Produced between 1963 and 1971, the work became one of the most influential and controversial photobooks of the twentieth century. Rather than adopting a detached documentary position, Clark photographed as a participant in the world he recorded, creating a direct and highly personal form of photographic narrative.

He continued these themes in photobooks including Teenage Lust (1983), The Perfect Childhood (1993), and later publications focused on youth culture, sexuality, and social marginality. Across his photographic work, recurring subjects include adolescence, drug culture, skateboarding, rebellion, and the transition between youth and adulthood. His books played a major role in redefining the photobook as a subjective and autobiographical form.

From the 1990s onward, he expanded into filmmaking. His debut feature Kids (1995), written by Harmony Korine, brought many of the concerns of his photographic work into cinema and became widely discussed for its portrayal of teenage life. Subsequent films included Another Day in Paradise (1998), Bully (2001), Ken Park (2002), Wassup Rockers(2005), Marfa Girl (2012), and The Smell of Us (2014). Throughout both photography and film, his work has remained centered on youth subcultures and forms of social experience often excluded from mainstream representation.

His photographs are held in major museum collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Photographic Arts. Tulsa in particular remains a landmark publication in postwar photography and photobook history.

Reference
Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), English edition. Retrieved May 31, 2026.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Clark