The photographer Richard Kern grew up in a small town in North Carolina, the son of a newspaperman. As a teenager, Kern had a part-time job changing the marquee at the local cinema, and one of the perks was free films. It was during a screening of Roger Vadim's camped up 1968 sci-fi flick "Barbarella" -- featuring the comely Jane Fonda as a frolicking space kitten -- that Kern experienced a sexual awakening while masturbating in the balcony.

I think the above anecdote is telling, because while there is no graphic nudity in Barbarella, the frequent glimpses of Fonda's curves through her loose and see-through costumes brings the film a deliciously erotic atmosphere.

This is the same atmosphere that characterizes the '70s French erotic cinema that continues to inform the photographs in Kern's ongoing "Soft" series -- a body of work that is the subject of a new exhibition at Speak For, a spacious downstairs gallery in Tokyo's trendy upscale shopping neighborhood of Daikanyama.