Issue No. 28 – Control

What is the nature of control? The desire for it—and to be free of it—are essential parts of both life and art.

Interiors: Larry Sultan's Pictures from Home

Interiors: Larry Sultan's Pictures from Home

Dad on Bed, 1984 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

Dad on Bed, 1984 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

By Sara Beck

In 1992, Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home was published to great critical acclaim. What began as a son’s desire to create a simple portrait of his father eventually gave way to what Sultan referred to as “deeper impulses.” In the midst of the Reagan era, when the institution of family had become a powerful image and political tool, he felt a strong urge “to puncture this mythology of the family and to show what happens when we are driven by images of success.” This resulting series of photos, however, produced over a decade of traveling the coast of California, is more than just a lasting statement on the American dream.

My Mother Posing for Me, 1984 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

My Mother Posing for Me, 1984 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

The book seems to serve two functions—to reimagine the broad ideal of the all-American family and to explore Sultan’s own familial dynamic. “I was willing to use my family to prove a point,” Sultan writes at the beginning of the book. While he photographed his mother and father, he deeply considered his role in their representation. Pictures from Home contains stills from Sultan’s family’s home movies dispersed throughout, as a means of representing his parents’ self-image. In each photo, it is clear how the specific translates to society at large. Sultan was interested in portraying the mystery of everyday life, which he found often only reveals itself in unexpected places, with seemingly mundane idiosyncrasies. 

Reading at the Kitchen Table, 1988 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry S…

Reading at the Kitchen Table, 1988 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

Each intimate glimpse into Sultan’s family home also showcases an interior that seems to reflect the era’s mindset of success as defined by capitalism. The home feels distinctly American, and the interactions unfolding within it are true to this feeling as well. Surrounded by decadent textiles, floor-to-ceiling wallpaper, and brightly colored carpeting, Sultan’s parents exist in a space that seems to affirm their accomplishments. They appear to be living the American dream, one emblemized by scenes of his mother and father moving through everyday life after retiring just outside of Palm Springs. Sultan, however, had access to an alternate, and perhaps more accurate, reality; one in which his father’s frustrations about being “discarded” by the corporation he had worked for, and the powerless feeling that followed, impacted the functioning of his family. 

Mom in Doorway, 1992 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

Mom in Doorway, 1992 from the series Pictures from Home © Estate of Larry Sultan / Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Casemore Kirkeby, San Francisco and the Estate of Larry Sultan

Overall, the sentiment behind Pictures from Home remains somewhat unclear. This is something Sultan himself recognizes, offering this comment to conclude the book: “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 for ever.” This desire felt by a child for their parents, a desire even more universal than that for the illusory American dream and the consumerist notion of success it is often coupled with, seems to exist at the root of what inspired Sultan to make these portraits. It speaks to the pain that is present beneath the otherwise sublime images, which serve not only to characterize a distinctive era within American history but also to immortalize an individual family and the particulars that defined them.

From Our Archives: Hassan Hajjaj

From Our Archives: Hassan Hajjaj

Death Under Trump

Death Under Trump