Les Krims

Born in 1943 in New York City, New York (US)
Lives and works in Buffalo, New York (US)

  

Watch your P's and Jews!

1979
Black and white photograph, gelatin-silver print
45.5 x 57 cm
Purchased in: 1987

A Marxist View; Bark Art; Art Bark (for ...
A Marxist View; Madam Curious; Bark Art;...
Mary's Middle-Class
May : Red, Yellow and Adams
Ménage à Trout; and a thought for Kid Twist
Watch your P's and Jews!

In these four photographs, Les Krims uses the surfeit of kitsch and gadgetry from mass culture to ironically rail against the stereotypes of over-industrialization. By drawing his inspiration from popular imagery and illustrated magazines, he deals with the relationship of dependence between people and their everyday surroundings. By the use of colour and through a loaded presentation, he alters the comfortable interior of an American family, turning it into a crazy and alarming world.
Here again, the photograph is no longer regarded as an instrument for revealing reality but as a tool for unmasking it by contrasting it with a reality which we do not perceive in any other way, and to which it alone attributes proofs of existence. Freed from the paraphernalia of conventions which once confined it to the rank of a mere recording technique, during the 1970s and 1980s photography laid claim to qualities of expression ordinarily attributed to painting and literature. In the presentation of his pictures, Les Krims illustrates a desire to shed light on another specific property of the photographic medium and break down the wall separating it from other media.

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