Larry Sultan
Larry Sultan was an American photographer born in California in 1946. He started as a conceptual photographer during the 70s and then went on to teach at the San Fransisco Art Institute (1978-1988) and then on to the California College of Arts (1989 – 2009). What drew me to this photographer is that he enjoys photographing his own family, which is an aspect of photography that I particularly enjoy too. As I was beginning to think of ideas for my black & white film project I thought that photographing my own family could be an interesting idea, and a project that would interest me greatly. When researching photographers who had done work on their family, Larry Sultan’s name came up. I had seen some of his work during university lectures but only when starting my project did I look closely in to his work. I found his ‘Pictures from Home’ series of images and found them very interesting, not only were they helpful during my black & white film project research, but I found that they were a good series of photos to look at going forward in my studies.
What drives me to continue this work is difficult to name. It has more to do with love than with sociology, with being a subject in the drama rather than a witness. And in the odd and jumbled process of working everything shifts; the boundaries blur, my distance slips, the arrogance and illusion of immunity falters. I wake up in the middle of the night, stunned and anguished. These are my parents. From that simple fact, everything follows. I realize that beyond the rolls of film and the few good pictures, the demands of my project and my confusion about its meaning, is the wish to take photography literally. To stop time. I want my parents to live forever.
Larry Sultan: An excerpt from Chapter One of Pictures From Home, 1992