Les Krims

Les Krims is an internationally known and influential photographer, currently a professor at Buffalo State College. His highly controversial photography has been published in numerous books and magazines. Many major museums, including the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Canada, Tokyo College of Photography and the Georges Pompidou National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, have either exhibited or acquired his work for their collections. Krims’ works are meant to shock and provoke their viewers. The photographs subvert the meanings of cultural symbols like the female nude by placing them in startling, yet ambiguous, contexts. Krims confronts us visually with fears and taboos otherwise confined to the imagination. By giving concrete form to repressed issues of sex, anti-Semitism, Freudian complexes and objectification of women, Krims forces us to consider our aversions.            (Joan Marotta, 2002)