The kids stay in the picture: a portrait of the photographer Larry Clark | Art & Architecture | guardian.co.uk Arts

Larry Clark is entertaining company, but it’s hard to know what to make of a grandfather who still puts such stock in his street cred. Likewise his new photographs, which are saturated in colour but oddly drained of meaning. They are not reportage or photojournalism, but sit somewhere between a street fashion shoot and a series of well-taken snapshots. As seen through Clark’s lens, Hispanic teen life in South Central looks neither as dangerous nor as transgressive as he insists it is.

‘They’re kind of like punks,’ Clark says of the scrawny kids from Compton, ‘with the tight jeans and painted shoes. They have a style that they call “dressing young”. Basically, they wear the same clothes they wore when they were 12, but now they’re 15 or 16.’

I’m tempted to say that Clark himself invented the ‘dressing young’ concept, but I let it pass.

Check it out here.