This is not a Larry Clark show

Showing of new film featuring creator of “Tulsa” slated for AHHA this month

More than ten years ago Lee Roy Chapman finally scored a copy of Larry Clark’s “Tulsa,” the seminal, controversial, and influential book of photographs that chronicled the seedier side of life here during the mid-‘60s. The austerely immediate black-and-white images and their often lurid subject matter made a permanent impression on the self-dubbed History Recovery Specialist.

“Larry’s art reflects the truth, and certainly ‘Tulsa,’ the book, is an eponymous document and that scares some people,” Chapman said.    

Photographed by Clark during a three-year jag of shooting film and amphetamines with his friends, “Tulsa,” first published in 1971, divided both critics and the public. Some praised the dark beauty found in Clark’s unflinching eye for the underbelly, hidden beneath the scrubbed Formica surface Tulsa presented to the world. Others criticized the focus on sex, drugs, and death as mere exploitive prurience.

“People have different perspectives,” Chapman said. “For some it’s exploitive, for others it’s revealing. I think it can be both…not something that has to be either accepted or rejected.”

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), the collection has never been given a proper exhibition in Clark’s birthplace. In 2011, 40 years after its publication, Chapman had an idea to rectify that.

With the help of friends, including filmmakers James Payne and Jeremy Lamberton, along with photographer Nick Haymes (all of whom documented the construction), Chapman created large reproductions of the book’s 59 photographs, papering them onto the walls of the derelict Big Ten Ballroom on Tulsa’s north side—a sort of blighted meta-installation built in admiration of a hometown black sheep. 

“I felt that they should be shown while Larry’s alive and that it was almost even more poetic to do it on the North Side where I know some of those guys hung out,” Chapman said.  “Do it guerilla-style. Not worry about all the bureaucrats and the politics, just go out and do something as artists. Like I say in the film, it was a temporary monument to Larry’s work.”

Adding another meta-layer, the resulting short film by Payne and Lamberton, as well as Haymes’ documentary photographs (along with other archival materials from Clark’s life and works), are the subjects of the upcoming “This Is Not a Larry Clark Show,” a one-night-only exhibition slated for Thursday, Feb. 13, at the Hardesty Arts Center.   

Chapman hopes that the show draws the attention of admirers and detractors alike, but he’d like most to see Clark get the recognition he deserves from those who would ignore his cultural influence.

“According to the Chamber of Commerce, we’re just this straight-laced, great, cheap place to live. Raise a family, corporations should move here…that’s kinda their message,” Chapman said. “Whereas, I see Tulsa as an incubator for serious cultural giants. We know who they are…why do we have to wait until they’re brain dead or six feet under [to pay them respect]?”

For more information on “This Is Not a Larry Clark Show,” visit the Arts and Humanities Council’s website, ahct.org/programs/ahha-films.