Pictures from Home

by Larry Sultan (Photographer)

In Pictures from Home, California photographer Larry Sultan brings together family photographs - including both memorabilia and his own pictures - and the voices of his father and mother commenting on those photographs and their lives. Part family album, part visual novella, the book explores complicated, emotional issues about the nature of photography that are side-stepped by most photographic books.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

127 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Larry Sultan grew up in California’s San Fernando Valley, which became a source of inspiration for a number of his projects. His work blends documentary and staged photography to create images of the psychological as well as physical landscape of suburban family life.

Sultan’s pioneering book and exhibition Pictures From Home (1992) was a decade long project that features his own mother and father as its primary subjects, exploring photography’s role in creating familial mythologies. Using this same suburban setting, his book, The Valley (2004) examined the adult film industry and the area’s middle-class tract homes that serve as pornographic film sets. Katherine Avenue, (2010) the exhibition and book, explored Sultan’s three main series, Pictures From Home, The Valley, and Homeland along side each other to further examine how Sultan’s images negotiate between reality and fantasy, domesticity and desire, as the mundane qualities of the domestic surroundings become loaded cultural symbols. In 2012, the monograph, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel was published to examine in depth the thirty plus year collaboration between these artists as they tackled numerous conceptual projects together that includes Billboards, How to Read Music In One Evening, Newsroom, and the seminal photography book Evidence, a collection of found institutional photographs, first published in 1977.

Larry Sultan’s work has been exhibited and published widely and is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he was also recognized with the Bay Area Treasure Award in 2005. Sultan served as a Distinguished Professor of Photography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946, Larry Sultan passed away at his home in Greenbrae, California in 2009.

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The new expanded and reformatted version is inferior to the original 1992 edition -- but it remains an impressive work regardless of the layout, combining photography and memoir to create a third space for the reader to inhabit.

[kyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful book, beautiful pictures, but felt that the narrative stopped somewhat short of digging for deeper more compelling truths. still, one of the best works of portraiture that i’ve encountered tbh

[EsWin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally have my hands on this book. This is the best photography book ever. I found it in my photo class room after searching and asking everyone for it. If you know of any copies for sale I'd love to find one! thanks.

[Wiktoria S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niet altijd even diepgaand, maar wel een mooie inzage in Larry Sultans achtergrond. Ik begrijp nu veel beter hoe zijn foto's zijn ontstaan, en waarom hij deze specifieke foto's maakte. Erg inspirerend, aangrijpend, ontroerend.

[Jen Okulanis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just saw the play on Broadway so had to read this. If you get a chance to see Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoe Wanamaker - go!

[Florian Ecker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr inspirierende Bilderreihe von Larry Sultan über seine Eltern bzw. seinen Vater. Auch wenn sich ein paar Abschnitte ziehen erhält man gegen Ende ein wunderschönes Porträt. Besonders fanszinierend sind die Streitgespräche zwischen Larry und seinem Vater über Larrys Kunst und das eigene Projekt wodurch eine Meta Diskussion entsteht durch die der ganze Band an Tiefe gewinnt.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing pictures of Sultan's parents in there San Fernando Valley Home and their story to go along with it.

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect this week; Always perfect.

[Ясен В. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Hsuan]

the text is so much more than expected.

[Dan Westervelt · Rating 2 out of 5]

5/5 for the play with Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoe Wanamaker. It’s mixed media approach was very appropriate for the subject.

However, maybe it’s because I saw the play first, but the book leaves something to be desired. Here there’s less humor, more melancholy, less about the author’s own life intertwined, more random sidebars in such a small body of text. It’s still worth it if you don’t have a chance to see the play, but not worth it if you do.

[ASC Library]

770 Sul

[Julie Grace Immink · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must be the place

[Seth Lindner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever you look at old photos of your parents, they always look older than you did.

[Mills College Library]

790.10222 S954 1992