Introduction
Leslie Robert Krims, Les Krims, was born in USA the 16th August 1942. He is a conceptual photographer living in Buffalo, New York. He is renowned for his carefully arranged photographs (called "fictions"), various candid series, his sarcasm and dark humor as well as a long-standing criticism of what he describes as leftist twaddle.
Les Krims was born in Brooklyn, New York. Krims studied at New York's Stuyvesant High School. Richard Ben-Veniste ("Benti," as he was called in home-room at Stuyvesant), famous for prosecuting Richard Nixon, and A.D. Coleman, the former photography critic for The New York Times, were two of Krims' Stuyvesant classmates. Krims studied art at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and Pratt Institute. For the last 42 years he has taught photography, first at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and for the last 40 years at Buffalo State College, where he is a professor in the Department of Fine Arts. In describing his staged pictures, and the parodies of candid journalistic propaganda photographs he makes, Krims said, "It is possible to create any picture one imagines." Krims's latest project is a website (leskrims.com) where he sells archival ink jet prints of a wide selection of his pictures. Krims claims new digital printing technology and capitalism make it possible to "own the means of production, rendering moot wall-to-wall delusional Marxist posturing in the culture community."
This American photographer was a precursor of the photographic staging in the 1970s.
The models, often naked and indifferent, are staged in “narrative paintings”, a close environment to an eccentric mess, domestic temple of consumption of some sort where multiple items pile up, troubling the spectator's regard. “They could be called ‘photo-collages' but only if specified that the collage of advertising, pictorial or media elements was before the shooting and is used to compose an environment in which characters are immersed in a visual swarm contradicting the normality of their attitude.
Dreamlike vision or hidden reality of the American way of life?
Les Krims offers off-the-wall images with a troubling result, often between ridiculous and fear, as they tend towards horror. The sarcastic title evokes without giving a meaning to the work. A link between human nature and culture.
Biography
Solo exhibitions (selected)
2011
- Polaroid Impossible, The Westlicht Collection, Westlicht Schauplatz für Fotografie, Vien, Austria
2010
- Les Krims : Satire Inspired by Wishful Thinking, the Culture Wars, and the Left?s [She]Nanigans, ARTISANworks, Rochester, USA
2009
- Manifesto, invité, Manifesto Festival d?Image, Toulouse, France
2008
- Les Krims, Serge Aboukrat Gallery, Paris, France
2007
- America Nude, PaceArt Contemporaena Gallery, Brescia, Italy
- Les Krims, Wishful Thinking : Satire Inspired by the Decline of the Left in America, baudoin lebon, Paris, France
2005
- Nues & Nus, Saint-Nazaire Church Municipal Museum, Bourbon Lancy, France
2004
- Les Krims, Fact or Fiction, The Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, USA
2002
- Les Krims, Forum de l?Image, Toulouse, France
1999
- Les Krims, The Experiment of Simulacrum, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Greece
1996
- Maison européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
1993
- Les Krims, Photography Center, Geneva, Switzerland
1991
- A Sense of Humor : Les Krims, New Image Gallery, James Madison University, Harrisburg, USA
1990
- Les Krims, Blue Sky, Oregon Center for Photographic Arts, Portland, USA
1987
- Les Krims, The Silver Eye Gallery, Pittsburgh, USA
Group exhibitions (selected)
2014
- Hysteria, Roger Ballen / Les Krims / Albert Londe / Joel-Peter Witkin, baudoin lebon, Paris, France
2013
- Summa Art Fair, with baudoin lebon, Madrid, Spain
2011
- Il corpo come linguaggio, Anni Sessanta e Settanta, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Milano, Italy
- Staged Photography, PaciArte Contemporanae Gallery, Brescia, Italy
2010
- Le bestiaire imaginaire, L?animal et la photographie, de 1850 à nos jours, Palais Lumière, Evian, France
- Starburst : Color Photography in America 1970-1980, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, USA
- Bodies Unbound, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
2009
- Bova Images Festival, Lazzaro, Italy
- A invenção de um mundo, selection from the Collection of Maison européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Sao Paolo, Brasil
- 70? La Photographie Américaine, National Library of France, Paris, France
2008
- The Last 10 Shots, an exhibition made to commemorate the discontinuate of Polaroid SX-70 film, Bongout Showroom, Berlin, Germany
- Ojos Privados, Laurence Miller Collection, Photo Colectania Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
- Molluskkollectiv, Bongout Showroom, Berlin, Germany
2007
- Livres de nus, une anthologie 1895-2002, Maison européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
- Pourtraire, Galerie du Cloître, Renne School of Fine Arts, France
- Seeing Ourselves : Masterpieces of American Photography, a travelling exhibition from the collection of George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, traveling to 9 museums from 2007-2009
- Regarde : des enfants, selections from the collection of Michèle and Michel Auer, Montpellier Photo-Visions, Montpellier, France
2006
- Acting the Part, Photography as Theater, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
- Le Mouvement des Images, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, France
- Musée à Vendre, Le Chalet de Haute Nuit, Belgium
- Wanted Paris, Wanted Paris Gallery, Paris, France
2005
- Beyond Real, Australian Center for Photography, New South Wales, Australia
- A Swiss Passion, FOTO Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
- Fine Arts Faculty Exhibition, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, USA
2004
- Enthüllt/Exposed, Städtische Museen Heilbronn, Heilbronn, Germany
- La Collection M+M Auer, une Histoire de la Photographie, Museum of Art and History, Geneva, Switzerland
- Street Credibility, Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA
2003
- Venus in Furs, Neue Galerie am Landsmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria
- Global Village : The 60s, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada
- The F.C. Gundlach Collection, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany
2002
- Hexenwahn, Ängste der Neuzeit, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Germany
- The Photographers Edge, Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinatti, USA
2001
- Photographs for Sick Kids, The Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, Scotland
2000
- Making Light : Wit and Humor in Photography, The Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, USA
- Le nu photographié, Galerie d?Art du Conseil Général des Bouches-du-Rhône, Aix-en-Provence, France
1999
- Digital Frontiers, Photography?s Future at Nash Editions, Monterey Museum of Art, USA
- The Century of the Body : Photoworks 1900-2000, Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal
1998
- Private Fictions, Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
- Fétiches & Fétichismes, Passage de Rez, Paris, France
- Sur La Tête, The Witkin Gallery, New York, USA
1997
- Oh Boy !, The Witkin Gallery, New York, USA
- The View from Denver, Stifnung Ludwig Museum of Modern Art, Vien, Austria
- Dérision & Raison, Museum of Photography of Charleroi, Belgium
1996
- A Celebration of 25 Years of Light Gallery, International Center of Photography Midtown, New York, USA
- Der zerteilte Blick, DuMont Kunsthalle, Köln, Germany
- Kobe Aid Fund Exhibition, Kobe/ Tokyo, Japan
1995
- 6e International Biennal of Photography, Torino, Italy
- From Light to Dark : The Look of Photographic Print, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
1994
- Fotodiffusion, Torino, Italy
- The camera i, Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA
- Interiors : A Metaphysical Construct, Montgomery College, Rockville, USA
1993
- Gli anni ? 70 lo sguardo, la foto, Civica Gallery, Modena, Italy
- Fine Arts Faculty Exhibition, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, USA
1992
- Photographic Ressource Center Benefit Exhibition, Boston, USA
1990
- American Myth, Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, USA
- New Art Examiner Auction/Exhibition, Chicago, USA
- Symbol and Surrogate : The Picture Within, University of Hawaii Art Gallery, Honolulu, Hawaii
public collections
Selected
- Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York, USA
- Vassar College Art Library, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
- Pratt Institute Library, Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Office of the Chief Architect, Port Authority of New York, New York, USA
- The Picker Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, USA
- The Charles Rand Penny Foundation
- Reva & David Logan Foundation
- Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, USA
- St. Bonaventure University, Saint Bonaventure, New York, USA
- Ben & Beatrice Goldstein Foundation
- Erie Community College North, Dry Memorial Library, New York, USA
- Cultural Art Committee, SUNY at Alfred, Alfred, New York, USA
- Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, USA
- University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, UAS
- The University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence, USA
- State University of New York at Geneseo, Geneseo, New York, USA
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
- George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, USA
- Musée de la photographie à Charleroi, Charleroi, Belgium
- Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Milan, Italy
Exhibitions
gallery exhibition
Hysteria
