Tackling “Tulsa”
One of the world’s most unconventional archivists takes on the work of Larry Clark.
By Jeff Martin
Johan Kugelberg has done it all. From 1990 to 1994, he was the General Manager for Atlantic Records subsidiary Matador Records and a marketing and A&R executive for Def American Records from 1994 to 1997.
He was the curator of the punk/rock sale at Christie’s in 2008, the first major auction sale devoted to punk. In addition, he has served as a curator and consultant in pop culture fields for auction houses around the world. As an archivist, he has created comprehensive collections in the fields of punk, hip hop, and counter culture, focusing on printed works, ephemera, photography, and book arts. The New York Post dubbed him the “Indiana Jones of punk and hip-hop.”
Currently, he is the owner and curator of Boo-Hooray, an archival processing company and project space in Manhattan. To date, Boo-Hooray has placed more than 120 archives with museums and university libraries around the world.
Philbrook Communications Manager Jeff Martin recently visited the archive in Chinatown and asked Johan a few questions about his methods, challenges, opportunities, and more.
Jeff Martin: How did you come to manage Larry Clark’s archive?
Johan Kugelberg: I have known Larry for over a decade, and before that was always a great admirer of his work.
I have worked a lot as an editor of photo books and as a curator of photo exhibits, staging shows and editing books ranging from American civil war photography to Daido Moriyama to contemporary names like Tino Razo, Peter Beste, Jerry Hsu, so as Larry and I started working together on a few exhibits and publications it became clear that Larry’s vast archive needed stewardship. I am honored that he has chosen me to do it. It is actually wonderful when a living-breathing-alive-and-kicking artist can be instrumental in the process. Research-wise, a lot of the heavy lifting goes out the window when you can dialogue with the creator of the work.
JM: What the biggest challenge in handling a photo archive specifically?
JK: That really truly varies with the nature of the archive. When we handled a gigantic African-American newspaper archive a year back, we had the problem of identification of prints, the stabilization of glass plates, some serious condition problems etc. With photographers, a big chunk of time in the archival process gets swallowed up by identifying vintage prints, edition prints, work prints, separating prints with imperfections or damage, learning to identify how a signature can change over the years, learning about photo paper from different eras and brands, stabilizing and in some instances digitizing negatives — a laundry list to be sure!
JM: What’s been your most surprising discovery in the archive?
JK: If I am wearing my photo editor hat, I sometimes will argue eloquently and loudly that a photographer is not necessarily always the best editor of his/her work. But when it comes to Larry, I can truthfully state that the reason that “Tulsa” is the ultimate American photobook masterpiece after Robert Frank’s “The Americans” is that Larry in his late twenties was already a superb editor of his own work. I have seen all the plentiful “Tulsa” outtakes, and no doubt there are plenty of masterpieces among them, but the gesamtkunstwerk status of the book and its relentless and unflinching Faulkneresque brilliance is thanks to Larry being an expert editor of his own work. He is also a darkroom wizard. The vintage prints are often sublime.
JM: What’s the current status of the archive? What’s next?
JK: We are on home stretch organizing it, and are ready for the next step which is gaining momentum, which is to ensure that Larry’s archive ends up in Tulsa where it truly belongs. It would really be a disservice to Tulsa and history and Larry if it ended up anywhere else. His work as a photographer, an artist, a filmmaker, in the midst of its controversial nature, is American masterwork. I trained as a historian, and when I work on archives I try to understand as best as I can how the materials will communicate centuries from now. I have no doubt that Larry Clark’s work will be studied and discussed alongside that of Robert Frank or Dorothea Lange or Matthew Brady.
JM: Why do you do this work?
JK: I get to wear several different hats, which suits my OCD and my ADD. I get to curate, to publish, to lecture, to organize, to enjoy and to learn. I really think I’ve gotten pretty good at this. I need to improve my surfing, my BBQ-smoking and my gardening skills, but I think my archiving work is top notch.
NOW ON VIEW: See Larry Clark’s iconic “Tulsa” photos at Philbrook Downtown through the end of 2019.
