I’ve mentioned Les Krims a few times in passing. I’m very drawn to his work. It’s everything I love in art; raw, creative, funny, irreverent, slightly insane. Once I start looking I can’t seem to keep myself from flipping to the next image.

A little about Les

In 1971, a young boy was kidnapped in Memphis, Tennessee. The ransom requested for the boy’s return was the removal of Les Krims’s photographs then on exhibition in Memphis. Krims’ pictures were removed and the boy was released unharmed. A few years later, Light Gallery, in New York City, published an original print portfolio containing the Krims photographs on view at that exhibition. Light Gallery titled the portfolio, “The Only Photographs in the World to Ever Cause a Kidnapping.” Krims had nothing to do with the kidnapping.

Les Krims has published numerous offset works. Two of these, “Fictcryptokrimsographs,” and “Making Chicken Soup,” were published by Humpy Press, which he founded and incorporated in the mid-1970s, and has since been dissolved. Krims has also published original print portfolios such as, “Idiosyncratic Pictures,” and “Porsch Rainbows.” Most recently (November 2005), a Photo Poche monograph, “Les Krims,” edited by Robert Delpire, with an introduction by Bernard Noel, was published by Actes Sud, in France.

I see glimpses of his work in artists of today like David La Chapelle and he’s definitely inspired some of the projects that I’m currently working on so a big thanks to the twisted Maestro of Jackassery, Les Krims.