Escape To New York: Revisit those edgy, NY girls of the early 90sNew York Girls, first released in 1995, and published by TASCHEN Books in 1996, defined a time, a place, and the raw aesthetic of the artist Richard Kern. Kern was a leading figure in the 1980s Cinema of Transgression, director of the iconic films You Killed Me First, Fingered, and Submit to Me Now; producer of Sonic Youth s Death Valley 69 and Marilyn Manson s Lunchbox music videos; and a pioneering zine publisher responsible for The Heroin Addict and The Valium Addict.After kicking his own heroin habit, Kern turned to still photography, shooting girls in his downtown, punk-inflected New York social circle. They were naked, bold, tattooed, pierced, and casually posed in minimal sets, mostly just Richard s ratty slum apartment. They were young, but not innocent, fully complicit in the bondage, gunplay, and infamous candle insertions. The text was an interview with Kern by Kim Gordon. All of this predated Suicide Girls by six years and was utterly, supremely cool.