Contact High

I didn’t buy this book for the art history. There’s a naked girl smoking on the cover, and that was the whole pitch. Opened it and got what I was looking for—more naked girls, more weed smoke, same unbothered vibe.

Richard Kern’s been photographing downtown culture since the ’90s, documenting the people orbiting music and fashion and art. Contact High collects mostly work from the ’90s and early 2000s—images of people very high, not performing for the camera, just existing. The pictures don’t apologize. No soft focus, no narrative, just bodies and smoke and that specific contentment that comes from being thoroughly stoned. Kern knew how to look at that without blinking.

Twenty-five euros for the book. It gives you what Kern does best: beautiful people, naked, high, unbothered. No theory, no apology, no pretense.