Richard Kern’s Wild, Wild East Village

Long before his louche Instagrams and series like “New York Girls,” Richard Kern was a land artist who moved from North Carolina to New York, documenting his forays into the city with a Polaroid camera. As it soon turned out, he preferred the wilderness of the Lower East Side to that of the South: His apartment on E. 3rd St. became home to bloody photo shoots of individuals in various states of undress, which he documented alongside hang-outs with friends like Lydia Lunch and drug busts happening outside his door. “Polarized,” his new exhibition at Fortnight Institute, is as much an archival show of New York as it is of Kern’s own life, complete with flyers, video, and other postcards from a wilder Manhattan. Take a look, here.