Photographs 
1 May 2025
Photographs 
110

Larry Clark b.1943

Tulsa

1968-71 / printed 1972
gelatin silver print image (each): 5¾ h × 8½ w in (15 × 22 cm) sheet (each): 8 h × 10 w in (20 × 25 cm)
estimate: $12,000–18,000
result: $12,065
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Signed to lower right of each ‘Larry Clark’. Numbered to verso of each ‘17/50’. Numbered to colophon ‘17/50’. This complete portfolio of ten works is number 17 from the edition of 50 published by Luhring Augustine, New York. Sold with original portfolio case.
provenance: Sotheby's, New York, Photographs, 6 April 2000, Lot 292 | Private Collection

This work will ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.

print

Under the Influence

Larry Clark’s ‘Tulsa’

i was born in tulsa oklahoma in 1943. when i was sixteen i started shooting amphetamine. i shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but i’ve gone back through the years. once the needle goes in it never comes out.
—Larry Clark, Prologue to Tulsa

Published in 1971 by Lustrum Press, Larry Clark’s photographic collection Tulsa rocked the world of photography. Taken between 1963 and 1971, Clark’s stark, confrontational photographs capture moments from his life during this period, which include scenes of him and his friends shooting up, having sex, and playing with guns. Tulsa has been both praised and criticized for the tensions it presents between art, voyeurism, and the nature of participant observation. Today Clark is perhaps best known for directing Kids (1995), and his visual style and subject matter influenced filmmakers including Martin Scorsese and Gus Van Sant. As curator Sienna Brown once put it, “Approaches to photography and the depiction of communities were never the same after Tulsa.” 

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