Sympathy Sentiments

The title for this month’s memo to you is not original with me; it appeared in The New York Times on Sunday, February 6, 2005. The serendipity and/or appropriateness was uncanny.

That is because many of us, scattered all over the country, are “working through” the loss of our friend, Carry Cleveland Myers, III, who died of a heart attack on January 26, 2005.

During our lifetime you and I will experience the deaths of many who are dear to us. It is never easy - and this is very hard.

My first experience with death (that I can remember) was my grandfather, who died when I was probably eight years old. The next death was a year or so later when “Auntie,” who was taking care of me while my mother was with my father on a business trip, dropped dead at my feet.

Both deaths were very scary and made worse because my vivid imagination gave me terrible nightmares. “Will it happen to me? Am I going to die, too?”

While time has helped me deal with death, I’ll probably never learn how to cope successfully with the loss of those who unexpectedly die young.

One’s frame of reference adjusts with age, of course, and while death of those in their 30’s is devastating, death at any age especially when unexpected - is very hard to accept.

Larry Clark

International Center of Photography

New York, New York

March 11-June 5, 2005

The conformity that saturated American society in the postwar 1950s created unreal expectations among the population due to the media’s use of advertisements and television shows to portray an orderly lifestyle full of hope and promise within the growing strength of capitalism. Beginning in 1963, Larry Clark carved out a niche in photography that reflected the consequences of adolescent dysfunction. By striking a chord with the riddles that ran beneath mainstream society, these images successfully captured the emptiness of the American Dream. However it was not until 1971 that Clark shocked the nation with the publication of “Tulsa” (1963-71)–a photographic series that depicts young men shooting up drugs, driving cars, playing with guns and engaging in violence. The same year Hunter Thompson published his own search for the American Dream titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), but unlike Clark who was demystified by the midwest from the start. Thompson came back from his venture empty-handed, having experienced nothing extraordinary beyond the dull, erratic subculture that was visually narrated by Clark. The retrospective of Clark’s work at the International Center of Photography in New York City features an array of photographs that were taken over the course of 35 years and bear witness to the evolution of alternative youth within our society.

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