Larry Clark and James Gilroy Release Collaborative Book 'Bedtime Stories for Bad Boys and Girls'

Photographer Larry Clark and artist James Gilroy have published their first collaborative book, 'Bedtime Stories for Bad Boys and Girls,' featuring Clark's photographs and Gilroy's drawings alongside transcriptions of their conversations. The two first met in downtown New York during the early 1970s, when Clark had already published his influential book 'Tulsa.' Their friendship spanned five decades, intersecting through the art world, downtown scenes, and shared experiences with drugs and close calls. The book's material covers the 1950s through the 1970s and beyond, documenting reckless youth and male friendship built on witness rather than sentimentality. Clark describes the work as capturing life's strange, non-cookie-cutter aspects, while Gilroy notes the content isn't typical dinner-party conversation. One of Clark's photographs, 'Kiko & Coco,' depicts two hustlers he met on 42nd Street between 1978 and 1981, part of a crew of mostly Puerto Rican teenagers living rough and engaging in transactional relationships for survival. Clark later found most had died. Gilroy's drawing 'Russian Roulette Frankie' recalls a 1967-68 incident where a kid named Frankie, on Owsley acid from California, shot his best friend during Russian roulette at the feast of St. Anthony's on Houston Street. Gilroy was in art school at the time, amid social revolution and concerns about the Vietnam War draft. The book is self-published and available now.