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Pictures from Home
First published in 1992 to wide critical acclaim, Pictures from Home is Larry Sultan’s pendant to his parents. Sultan returned home to Southern California periodically in the 1980s and the decade-long sequence moves between registers, combining contemporary photographs with film stills from home movies, fragments of conversation, Sultan’s own writings and other memorabilia. The result is a narrative collage in which the boundary between the documentary and the staged becomes increasingly ambiguous. Simultaneously the distance usually maintained between the photographer and his subjects also slips in an exchange of dialogue and emotion that is unique to this work.
Significantly increasing the page count of the original book, this MACK design of Pictures from Home clarifies the multiplicity of voices – both textual and pictorial – in order to afford a fresh perspective of this seminal body of work. Emphasising the cinematic motion of the family’s home videos, the Super-8 film stills have been newly digitised and magnified, with select scenes running full-bleed across double-page spreads. Meanwhile, Sultan’s photographs of his parents as they go about their daily lives – against the quintessential backdrop of the Reagan-era American dream – are supplemented with previously unpublished images. Most significantly, the book honours Sultan as the oft-hailed ‘King of Colour Photography’.
"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." – Larry Sultan
Significantly increasing the page count of the original book, this MACK design of Pictures from Home clarifies the multiplicity of voices – both textual and pictorial – in order to afford a fresh perspective of this seminal body of work. Emphasising the cinematic motion of the family’s home videos, the Super-8 film stills have been newly digitised and magnified, with select scenes running full-bleed across double-page spreads. Meanwhile, Sultan’s photographs of his parents as they go about their daily lives – against the quintessential backdrop of the Reagan-era American dream – are supplemented with previously unpublished images. Most significantly, the book honours Sultan as the oft-hailed ‘King of Colour Photography’.
"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." – Larry Sultan
- GenresPhotographyArtNonfiction
192 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1992
4 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
About the author
Larry Sultan
13 books4 followersLarry 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 26, 2021
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.
June 30, 2024
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
January 19, 2011
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.
December 31, 2024
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.
March 5, 2023
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!
October 7, 2024
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.
June 29, 2017
Amazing pictures of Sultan's parents in there San Fernando Valley Home and their story to go along with it.
March 20, 2020
Perfect this week; Always perfect.
May 12, 2023
Brilliant.
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May 13, 2023the text is so much more than expected.
June 19, 2023
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.
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.
Want to read
September 15, 2023770 Sul
December 5, 2023
This must be the place
November 4, 2025
Whenever you look at old photos of your parents, they always look older than you did.
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October 10, 2014790.10222 S954 1992
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews