Larry Clark Quotes & Sayings

At the end of the day, what I show is real life. I tell the truth. And the truth can be shocking. — Larry Clark

I think the reason why I never wanted to do a retrospective is because I was scared to go back and look at all this stuff through the years. — Larry Clark

My greatest lesson in composition was looking at paintings. — Larry Clark

I just happened to have my camera and be photographing my friends. It was totally innocent; there was no purpose to the photographs. There was a purity to them that wasn't planned; it was realism. — Larry Clark

[Eugene Smith] was always writing these diatribes about truth, and how he wanted to tell the truth, the truth, the truth. It was a real rebel position. It was kind of like a teenager's position: why can't things be like they should be? Why can't I do what I want? I latched on to that philosophy. One day I snapped, hey, you know, I know a story that no one's ever told, never seen, and I've lived it. It's my own story and my friends' story. — Larry Clark

The work all comes from a psychological need. See the images that I make ... It's really a psychological need. I'm just jerked around by it. I'm pulled by it. — Larry Clark

I tell people to frame the picture. Make the greatest, most perfect composition you can ... and then take a step forward. It skews it a bit and makes it more interesting. — Larry Clark

I am a storyteller. I've never been interested in just taking the single image and moving on. I always like to stay with the people I'm photographing for long periods of time. — Larry Clark

I always felt that when I was photographing, I had a psychic need to see this, to photograph this. And I think if somebody else had been doing this work, and if I could have seen these pictures anywhere at all, then there would have been no need to make them. — Larry Clark

I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before. — Larry Clark

For me there are no rules. I think I learned that from artists-from painters and sculptors. It took photography a while to catch up to them. — Larry Clark