THE AGONY AND ECTASY( With print)
Bob Carlos Clarke
THE AGONY AND ECTASY( With print)
Photographs: Bob Carlos Clarke
Text: Max Houghton
Publisher: The Little Black Gallery
65 pages
Pictures: 32
Year: 2021
Comments: Hardcover, open stitched spine, 20 x 14,5cm, b&w photographs. First edition (with this publisher) of 200 (Originally published by Jane&Jeremy in 2018). Comes with 3″ x 4″ print of The Agony and The Ecstasy.
Bob Carlos Clarke (1950–2006) was a prolific photographer, who was best known for his striking images of women which drew comparisons to Helmut Newton. This series of Public School Balls (notoriously orgiastic parties for rich teenagers) was shot in 1994 at the Hammersmith Palais, London. Containing 33 images, the series encapsulates the abandonment of youthful innocence.
Bob Carlos Clarke was a provocateur. His visual interests – women and rubber, in particular – sealed his reputation as a photographer of erotic images. However, Carlos Clarke was far from one-dimensional. Serious about his work, he studied at the London College of Printing, where he fell in love with the sensual space of the dark room, and then as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Art. His work would span the genres of fine art, celebrity portraiture, photojournalism and advertising photography; his signature style a dark, brooding vulnerability.
He had described his native Cork, which he left as a young man, as ‘no place for a libidinous adolescent.’ A quarter of a century later, he found the perfect location to observe teenage lust: Public School Balls. Such events feature the holy trinity of ‘getting off with’ the object of one’s desire: alcohol, music and easily removable clothes. Carlos Clarke, who was sent to board at Wellington College, saw this orgiastic spectacle as ‘a peculiar side effect of a British public school education’, in which access to the other sex is limited to the point of obsession, if not actual sexual persuasion. Yet in a club, the Hammersmith Palais, this explosion of unleashed sexuality mirrors the same scene in youth clubs, living rooms and public parks across the country. Lips lock, tongues dart, fingers probe, hands grasp flesh, in this rite of passage from innocence to experience. Carlos Clarke captures its crescendo in a joyous tempest of foam, pumped out across the dance floor. Everyone tries to catch it, to rub it in to their skin and that of their friends, wanting it – and the moment – to last forever.
Years later, Carlos Clarke said it was amusing to observe people’s reactions to recognising themselves in these pictures … the wider question is, which of us doesn’t?
Text by Max Houghton
more books tagged »print« | >> see all
-
PINE VALLEY (SPECIAL SIGNED LTD EDT WITH PRINT)
by Robert Adams
sold -
Westward the Course of Empire (Deluxe edition of 60)
by Mark Ruwedel
Euro 1200 -
CDG (SPECIAL EDITION WITH PRINT)
by JH Engström
Euro 700 -
Vinter (LTD EDT WITH PRINT)
by Lars Tunbjörk
sold -
Maryline #0 : Placenta (Tirage de tête)
by Maryline
sold -
Aurele bent over to kiss Joana, New York 1999
by Nan Goldin
price on request
more books tagged »youth« | >> see all
-
Letters Home
by Raphaël Gianelli-Meriano
sold -
Shojokan (The Young Girls' House) (WITH OBI)
by Kishin Shinoyama
sold -
Diary (SIGNED)
by Corinne Day
sold -
STUDIO PARADISO
by Max Natkiel
sold -
goddess alien lover
by Valerie Phillips
sold -
Juvenile
by Osamu Wataya
Euro 35
more books tagged »disco« | >> see all
-
The Father of Pop Dance (Signed)
by Tiane Doan na Champassak
Euro 28 -
Night in Paris
by Daniel Frasnay
sold -
Studio 54
by Tod Papageorge
sold -
Discology
by Katsumi Watanabe
sold -
Studio 54 (SIGNED)
by Tod Papageorge
sold
more books tagged »teenage« | >> see all
-
Sex, Drugs & Magick (book two) (signed)
by Gareth McConnell
sold -
Cut Off
by Dmitri Markov
sold -
Cardiff After Dark
by Maciej Dakowicz
sold -
1985
by Bill Henson
sold -
Macedonia
by Cuny Janssen
sold -
The Perfect Childhood
by Larry Clark
sold
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com