He first came to prominence as part of the cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films like The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered, which featured personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Sonic Youth, Kembra Pfahler, Karen Finley and Henry Rollins.
Like many of the musicians around him, Kern had a deep interest in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence and perversion and was involved in the Cinema of Transgression movement, a term coined by Nick Zedd.
Kern, whose father was a North Carolina newspaper photographer and editor,[1] turned in the 1990s almost exclusively to still photography.
Although mainly known in recent years for his photographs of naked women, he frequently shoots celebrity portraits for international publications.
His book Action, edited by Dian Hanson, was released in 2007 by Taschen, featuring more than 200 full-color photographs of young nude women.