Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
CLARK, Larry. The Perfect Childhood. London: LCB in association with Thea Westreich 1993, 1993.
Price: US$190.80 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First Edition, First Printing. 4to, 283x235mm. Unpaginated. Black cloth with title and author printed in silver on the spine. Some modest bumping to the corners and rubbing to edges. Original illustrated dust jacket with some chipping to the top of the backstrip and a repaired tear to the foot of the front cover on the hinge with the flap. Illustrated throughout. No text. Banned in the U.S. when it was released. Over 150 colour and black and white photographs including Clark's use of collage and images taken from television screens. "Larry Clark's work has always obsessively circled around adolescent boys, their awakening sexual drives, the enormous energies they have to harness. Clark offers the viewer a cultural anthropology of this transitory period that oscillates between painful pleasure and exuberant self-destruction. Clark is spellbound with the vital, unruly, and destructive force teen boys exude. Clark confronts us with lucid images of male sexuality and its equally creative and destructive impulses. He combines pop-culture imagery with his own photographs to evoke a myth ingrained in the heart of our culture. The Perfect Childhood combines an overview of Clark's work-ranging from collages and found images to photographs from his native Oklahoma in the late 1960's-with a new series of tender and erotic portraits of a skater boy-the latest incarnation of the mythical eternal youth Clark investigates and idolizes in his work. Material from the past 30 years is combined to create one new work of art-overwhelming proof of the consistency of Clark's artistic vision. The book is as raunchy and brutally straightforward as it is melancholy and affectionate. Its attitude will confound all those thinking in comfortable and complacent opposites-gay and straight, creative and destructive, tenderness and violence, good and evil. Clark's work is a mirror for those strong enough to face the truth about growing up as a boy." This is a very good copy of an important and controversial work.
Seller: Voewood Rare Books. ABA. ILAB. PBFA, Holt, United Kingdom
Larry Clark. The Perfect Childhood (True First Edition). LCB January 1993, 1993.
Price: US$225.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Corners have been mildly bumped. Dust jacket now covered in protective mylar sleeve.
Seller: Dunaway Books, St. Louis, MO, U.S.A.
Price: US$225.00 + shipping
Description: Large quarto. Unpaginated (176)pp. Color photo illustrated dust jacket, black spine lettered in white. Black cloth with lettering on spine. Color photographs on two frontispieces and the title page. Profusely illustrated with numerous color and b/w photographs of teenagers "gone wild" (some are sexually explicit). Includes reproduction of newspaper and magazine covers and clippings, and notes. Clark is also the author of the cult books Tulsa and Teenage Lust. Dustjacket with minor wear along top edge.
Seller: ERIC CHAIM KLINE, BOOKSELLER (ABAA ILAB), Santa Monica, CA, U.S.A.
CLARK, Larry. The Perfect Childhood. LCB in association with Thea Westreich, London, 1993.
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Description: First edition. Hardcover. The true first printing of Clark's somewhat controversial book which was to be published in the United States but was suppressed. The Scalo edition came out two years later. A collection of video stills, collages and other images that continues to explore Clark's fascination with teenagers and sex. A very fine copy in a very fine dust jacket. Still in the publisher's shrinkwrap.
Seller: Jeff Hirsch Books, ABAA, Wadsworth, IL, U.S.A.
CLARK, Larry. The Perfect Childhood. LCB in association with Westreich, 1993.
Price: US$325.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: First edition (so stated). 4to. Dust jacket (unclipped). Color and b/w photos. Fine. Unpaginated. No signatures or bookplates. Extra shipping charges for Canada & overseas. Printed by Steidl, Gottingen.
Seller: Houle Rare Books/Autographs/ABAA/PADA, Palm Springs, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$330.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: np, profusely illustrated in color and b&w. Designed by Hans Werner Holzwarth and Design pur. Text in English. Published in Switzerland 1995, Larry Clark's "The Perfect Childhood" caused quite a stir when the attorneys for its American distributor upon seeing their first copy refused to let it be imported due to the prevailing moral climate. The successor to "Tulsa" and "Teenage Lust", it continues the notorious photographer/director's fascination with the American teen through wall-to-wall photos, collages, video stills and re-photographed press clippings - most of which are previously unpublished. Highly voyeuristic in nature, there is no shortage here of sex, violence, skateboarders and Matt Dillon! A brand new, most handsome example of the uncommon true first edition (cited on page 245 of Alessandro Bertolotti's "Books of Nudes") issued by Larry Clark Books in association with Thea Westreich. PLEASE NOTE: Due to the explicit nature of some of the content here, you must be at least eighteen years of age to order this item.
Seller: Arcana: Books on the Arts, Culver City, CA, U.S.A.