Richard Kern

A former heroin addict himself, Kern's photos offer the opportunity to stare into the far more insidious face of contemporary prescription drug addiction. On the genesis of the project, Kern has said, 'A woman working for me a few years ago told me that she was very jittery because she had taken too much Adderall. When I asked her about taking meds, she said that all of her friends took them too.' The resulting images - young women in their underwear holding up their pill bottles (Valium and Klonopin, but also Relpax, a treatment for migraines) and birth control packets against a background of their own cozily haphazard bathrooms and bedrooms - fall somewhere between scenes of confession and screen grabs from a YouTube tutorial.