Richard Kern Has Always Been Watching

Richard Kern has spent four decades making images that sit in the space between desire and unease, and Jogger Stalker does exactly what the title promises. His whole practice lives there—in the long lens, the stolen angle, the suggestion of surveillance that might be mutual and might not be. The women in his photographs are never passive objects, even when the framing wants you to read them that way; there’s always a negotiation happening, usually one the camera can’t quite see. He came up through the Lower East Side no-wave scene of the early 80s, making Super 8 films with Lydia Lunch and Nick Zedd and anyone else who was too broke and too weird to care about permission, and that energy never really left. The voyeurism is still the point. So is the beauty. So is the discomfort of not being sure which one you’re there for.