New York Girls is a landmark photobook by Richard Kern, capturing the raw, sexual spirit of New York’s downtown underground in the mid-1990s. Originally released in 1995, the first Taschen printing followed in 1997, presenting the work close to its original moment, before later recontextualizations and additions.
 
Shot primarily in cramped apartments and private interiors, Kern’s photographs reject glamour in favour of stark immediacy, documenting a generation of women embedded in punk, DIY, and alt-culture scenes with an unfiltered sense of intimacy and provocation.
 
Kern’s signature style blurs the line between voyeurism and collaboration, resulting in images that feel both confrontational and disarmingly personal. The photographs reflect the aesthetics and attitudes of a pre-digital New York, where transgression, self-expression, and underground culture intersected with everyday life.
 
This 1997 Taschen printing is increasingly scarce and sought after, valued for its fidelity to the original sequencing and tone of the project. Offered here in almost mint condition, it stands as an important early artifact of Kern’s most influential body of work and a defining document of 1990s downtown photography.