Larry Sultan

Larry Sultan born July 13th 1946 in Brooklyn, New York was an American photographer. He grew up and spent most of his life in San Fernando Valley, California. He studied at the University of California in Santa Barbara and then graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He also studied at the San Francisco Art Institute where he received his master’s in fine arts.His career started in the 1970’s, he was a conceptual photographer. He created a series of images called ‘Pictures from home’ this was his pioneering book. The project was created over around 10 years. The project is about his parents and their retired home life. He explores the relationship that his parents have with each other and tries to capture those unique moments. He also published many other photo books which included ‘Evidence’ from 1977, ‘the Valley’ from 2004 and ‘Here and ‘Here and Home’ from 2014.

‘PICTURES FROM HOME’

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Analysis

TECHNICAL: The woman in the photo is in focus but the back of the man’s head is slightly out of focus meaning a wide aperture may around f4 or f5.6 was used. From looking at the image it looks like there was no artificial lights used and the photographer has just used natural window light which appears to be coming from the right hand side. The image would have been taken on film as the images were taken in the 1980’s and 90’s this will have an impact on the images as film can have a very different look to digital photos.

VISUAL: The first thing I think when I look at this image is how flat and filmic the image looks. There is very little contrast in the image only from the shadows behind the woman and behind the plants and curtain. The green wall brings casts onto the image giving it that ‘cinematic green tint’ without completely changing the colour of the other elements of the image. Also the colours in the image make it feel old and vintage. The main colours in the image are a green and purple, these colours are opposite to each other on the colour wheel meaning they compliment each other well. The unsaturated look of the image helps to show the age of the image aswell.

CONTEXTUAL: This image is from Larry Sultan’s photobook ‘Pictures from home’ the images in the book are of his parents at home and the life that they have. The images were taken over a 10 year span and were a mixture of stages images as well as documented images of the relationship and daily life between his mother and father. The staged images were created to try and replicate film stills from home movies as well as involving writings, fragments of conversation and other memorabilia. As a result the book seems to blurr the lines between documentary photography and staged images.

CONCEPTUAL: This image can be interpreted in different ways. A popular perception of this image is that this image shows a sense of patriarchy and misogyny. This is because of the composition and placement of the subjects in the image. The two people in the image are the parents of the photographer, in the image the father is watching the Tv by himself while the mother just stands to the side looking like she doesn’t know what to do. This creates a sense of patriarchy as the man of the house is stereotypically watching sports on the TV while the woman is not joining him. The woman’s body position seems uncomfortable like she doesn’t know what to do or is nervous. However, because of the name of the image ‘My mother posing for me’ I interpret this image as being a staged image where the mother has seen the camera and quickly tried to pose therefore looking awkward.

Why I am studying Larry Sultan

I chose to study Larry Sultan and specifically his book ‘Pictures from home because I like the way he has dones his project and the idea I have for my book is a similar feel his book. I want my project to be a documentary of the here and now but to include memories and archive footage from when my grandad was alive.Larry Sultan’s work links well to my project because he documented his parents in their house in the 80’s, some of his images were staged and some were natural. The style of his images is similar to how I want to document my Nan who still lives here and the house where her and my Grandad live.