Richard Kern

Richard Kern
Born	1954 (age 62–63) Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, United States
Occupation	Filmmaker, writer, photographer
Years active	1979-present
Spouse(s)	Martynka Wawrzyniak (2007–2015)

Richard Kern (born 1954) is an American underground filmmaker, writer and photographer. He first came to underground prominence as part of the underground cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films like The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered, which featured underground personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Sonic Youth, Kembra Pfahler, Karen Finley and Henry Rollins. Like many of the musicians around him, Kern had a deep interest in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence and perversion and was one of the leading lights of the movement called Cinema of Transgression, a term coined by Nick Zedd.

Kern's first dabbling in the arts was a series of self-produced underground magazines featured art, poetry, photography and fiction by Kern and several friends. These hand-stapled and photocopied zines expressed the bleakness of New York City's East Village in the early 1980s. Kern's first zine was the bi-monthly The Heroin Addict, which was later renamed to The Valium Addict. About 12 issues of these two zines were produced, along with the occasional special issue. This phase of Kern's career lasted from late 1979 to around 1983.

In 1985, Kern directed a video for the Sonic Youth song, "Death Valley '69", which led to more music video work, including videos for King Missile ("Detachable Penis") and Marilyn Manson ("Lunchbox").

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