Les Krims (born Leslie Robert Krims, August 16, 1942) is an American conceptualist photographer living in Buffalo, New York. He is known for his carefully arranged fabricated photographs (which he calls "fictions"), candid series, satirical edge, dark humor, and long-standing criticism of what he describes as leftist political discourse.
Life and Education
Krims was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended Stuyvesant High School. Among his classmates were Richard Ben-Veniste, known for prosecuting Richard Nixon, and A.D. Coleman, former photography critic for The New York Times. He studied art at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and the Pratt Institute. He has taught photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and, for over 40 years, at Buffalo State College, where he is a professor in the Department of Fine Arts.
Work and Notable Projects
Krims is regarded as one of the most controversial photographers working in staged or constructed imagery during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His work scrutinizes and satirizes topics such as consumerism, feminism, race, and societal taboos.
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The Little People of America (1971): Krims photographed members of the national organization "The Little People of America," founded by actor Billy Barty. He aimed to depict his subjects as ordinary people, in contrast to historical artistic portrayals of dwarfs.
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The Deerslayers (1972): Photographs of deer hunters posing with their kills at New York State deer check stations. Krims drew parallels between the hunters and performance art, while also critiquing animal rights and anti-Vietnam War activism.
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The Incredible Case of the Stack O'Wheat Murders (1972): A parody of forensic photography. Each crime scene features a stack of pancakes (Stack O'Wheats) placed near a posed "victim," with the number of pancakes indicating the crime number. Hershey's chocolate syrup was used to simulate blood. The original print portfolio included a bag of Hershey's syrup and pancake mix.
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Making Chicken Soup (1972): A book of photographs depicting Krims's mother preparing her traditional chicken soup recipe while nude. The book was dedicated "to my mother and concerned photographers, both make chicken soup," satirizing what Krims viewed as the ineffectiveness of "socially concerned" photography.
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Fictocryptokrimsographs (1975): A series of 40 Polaroid SX-70 pictures in which Krims manipulated the wet film emulsion to create humorous and pun-based images.
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The Decline of the Left: An ongoing project spanning several decades.
Publications and Exhibitions
Krims published several offset works through Humpy Press, which he founded. In 2005, a Photo Poche monograph titled Les Krims, edited by Robert Delpire with an introduction by Bernard Noel, was published by Actes Sud in France. He has exhibited at Laurence Miller Gallery in New York City (2004), Galerie Baudoin Lebon in Paris (2007), and numerous group exhibitions. His work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
