Larry Clark Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

My greatest lesson in composition was looking at paintings.

When I started shooting speed, amphetamine, when I was 15, almost 16, it actually calmed me down.

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.

If I want something I do everything to get it.

My favorite color is green.

I've been a photographer for my whole life and I've done everything with photography that I felt I could do, and I always wanted to be a filmmaker.

I was over self-medicating back when I was a kid and didn't know it.

I learned how to skate, I couldn't do the tricks, but I could certainly skate fast enough. I could keep up with anybody and I could bomb hills and I could hide behind my camera.

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.

If you've seen my books through the years, I've always been a storyteller.