Richard Kern: Face to Panty Ratio

Kern’s been shooting explicit photographs since the eighties, and the work doesn’t apologize for itself or for the women in it. There’s a directness to his stuff that makes most art photography look precious by comparison—he’s interested in what people actually look like, how they actually move, not some mediated version of sexuality. The ratio in the title is his own joke: how much face, how much body, what’s the right proportion for the picture to work. It’s funny and it’s honest, which is rarer than it should be.