Challenging its truth-telling capabilities with a hybrid of documentary and staged work, Larry Sultan’s photographs mine the psychological nuances in daily family interaction across the suburban landscape.
The photographs are selected from Sultan’s series Pictures from Home (1983), Untitled Home Movie Stills (1984-93) and The Valley (1997-2003), in addition to editorial work made between 1993 and 2003 for Wallpaper and Bottega Veneta. Sultan probed the medium of photography, experimenting with its structure and challenging its truth-telling capabilities. A hybrid of documentary and staged photography often touched with tender irony, his photographs mine the psychological nuances in daily family interaction across the suburban landscape. Throughout, Sultan’s images negotiate between reality and fantasy, domesticity and desire, revealing the personal and the idiosyncratic in the flow of ordinary life.