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Notes from Underground

  And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
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Hope

To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.-- Erich Fromm


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SHOT BY KERN






Richard Kern, photographer and filmmaker remains, first and foremost, a portraitist.   For more than two decades Kern has sought to unravel and illuminate the complex and often darker sides of human nature.

 Kern makes the psychological space between the sitter, photographer and audience his subject. With his dry, matter of fact approach, he underlines the absurdity of truth and objectivity in photography while playing with our reliance upon taxonomies around sexual representation. 
Kern’s images have been widely published in Purple, Vice, V Magazine and Italian GQ as well as in his numerous books and exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and in more than 30 solo shows around the world.




Kern lives and works in New York City.
Shot by Kern is a web series which follows artist Richard Kern as he photographs girls  in different cities across Europe , Canada and America in collaborations with Vice.


http://www.richardkern.com/








Shot By Kern (PHOTO) >>>
 Best Of Part 1 - Shot By Kern | SBS On Demand >>>
Shot by Kern Enhance TV >>>
Richard Kern on Vice >>>
















The Concept

The project was originally conceived by then-VICE editor-in-chief Jesse Pearson. The goal was to take Kern out of his usual New York City environment and document him traveling globally to shoot "Kern-style" portraits of women.

Over several years, Kern traveled to countries including Brazil, Russia, Bulgaria, Italy, and Sweden. The series focused on "real women" rather than professional fashion models, capturing them in their own apartments or local settings.






The Casting Process

Unlike traditional fashion shoots, "Shot by Kern" relied heavily on the burgeoning power of the internet and the "prosumer" desire for self-documentation. Subjects were often:

  • Volunteers: Fans of Kern’s work who reached out via MySpace or email.

  • Non-Professionals: Students, artists, and office workers rather than agency-signed models.

  • The "Kern Girl" Archetype: Kern looked for women who possessed a specific blend of awkwardness, intelligence, and a willingness to be seen without the "mask" of professional retouching.














Key Themes and Aesthetic

Kern’s work in this series is noted for several recurring motifs:

  • Intimacy in the Ordinary: He often shoots subjects performing mundane tasks like brushing teeth, applying makeup, or using technology.

  • The "Male Gaze" and Voyeurism: Kern openly plays with the concept of the voyeur, often placing the camera in positions that feel like a "peek" into a private moment (e.g., peering through legs or from under a bed).

  • Super-Realism: Moving away from the high-contrast, dramatic lighting of his early 80s work, this series uses natural or "matter-of-fact" lighting to emphasize the reality of the subjects.

  • Testing Boundaries: Kern has described the process as a "test" for the models—many of whom reach out to him specifically to see how they look through his lens.







Richard Kern’s Background

To understand "Shot by Kern," one must look at Kern's history:

  • Cinema of Transgression: In the 1980s, Kern was a leader in this movement, directing "death punk" short films featuring underground legends like Lydia Lunch and Sonic Youth.

  • Music Videos: He directed iconic videos, such as Sonic Youth's "Death Valley '69" and King Missile's "Detachable Penis."

  • Evolution to Photography: In the 1990s, he shifted focus to still photography, becoming a regular contributor to Purple, GQ, and Playboy.





Notable Media & Books

  • The Web Series: Available originally on VBS.tv/VICE, following the casting and behind-the-scenes of the shoots.

  • The Book: Published by Taschen (2013), edited by Dian Hanson. It includes 300+ photographs and an hour-long video with a soundtrack by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

  • The DVD: VBS Presents: Shot by Kern, collecting 20 episodes of the travel series.



















Institutional Recognition

Despite the controversy, Kern's work is collected by prestigious institutions including:

  • The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

  • The Whitney Museum of American Art

  • The Kunsthalle Wien

Today, "Shot by Kern" stands as a historical document of the "VICE Era" of the early 2000s, capturing a specific moment when the underground, the internet, and the mainstream fashion world collided.






























































































































The Right Side of my Brain
A woman goes through a series of sexual assignations that involve varying degrees of violence. A voiceover provides her musings on sex, violence, power and control. >>>

























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