Kembra Pfahler Papers

The Kembra Pfahler Papers (dated 1961-2015) document Pfahler's work as a filmmaker, artist, actress, model, and rock musician. This collection contains a significant number of photographs chronicling the path of Pfahler and Samoa Moriki's New York City-based theatrical rock band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (TVHKB) both on and off the stage while they performed in New York City clubs including CBGB and the Marquee, and on tour throughout the United States during the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Many of the photographs were taken by New York-based photographers including Laure Leber, Katrina del Mar, Steve Glemboski, and Tina Paul. Pfahler's handwritten music lyrics, setlists, scrapbooks, costume sketches, press clippings, and promotional fliers and posters provide insight into a Lower East Side band that incorporated performance art and music into their stage shows. Images of their glam rock and dark humor performances in this collection include graphic nudity and simulated sexual acts. Their costuming typically included members with painted naked bodies, wigs, false rotted teeth, and handmade costumes and props created by Pfahler and other members.

Outside of the band, Pfahler pursued adjacent careers including her participation in the 1980s underground film movement Cinema of Transgression, which used shock value and black humor in film. This collection contains documentation of some of her films including photographs, film stills, promotional material, and a set of stills with New York artists and fellow Cinema of Transgression members Nick Zedd and Annie Sprinkle as actors. Her acting work is represented in this collection through video sleeve covers and promotional material from 1990s fetish films which include imagery of BDSM and other simulated sex acts. Pfahler's work as a print and runway model is depicted in both photographs and publications in this collection, including photographs taken by Rosalie Knox, Annie Sprinkle, Laure Leber, and Richard Kern, some of which include nudity and sexual situations. Her work as a performance and visual artist dates from the 1980s to 2010s and is represented in this collection through photograph documentation of performances, exhibition spaces, installations of her drawings and self-portraits, and notes, as well as promotional material for openings and events. These performances and artworks often depict Pfahler in her Karen Black character, with her naked body painted, wearing a black wig and false rotten teeth, and sometimes include other members from TVHKB. This collection also contains drawings, notes, press clippings, and runway show photographs related to Pfahler's clothing line from the early 2000s. Materials from Pfahler's personal life include correspondence, ephemera, and press clippings, as well as a significant amount of photographs of Pfahler's friends, family, travels, portraits of Pfahler, first husband Samoa Moriki, and partner Colin de Land.