Parents, porn sets and Bob's Big Boy combos: how Larry Sultan photographed American domestic life

"A psychiatric review of Larry Sultan, carried out by the military in 1969, described the American as an anxiety-prone individual who felt like a left-out observer looking inside. Sultan may not have been fit for service but, with that short phrase, the report identified the essential quality that would make him a great photographer of American domestic life. The report is included in a new book, Water Over Thunder, published in collaboration with Sultan's widow Kerry and son Max."

"In a career that began in the 1970s and lasted until his death in 2009 at the age of 63, Sultan was never confined to a single genre, but rather moved between documentary, fiction and appropriation. He photographed the ordinary middle-class homes of the San Fernando Valley in California rented out for porn shoots, made a portrait of Paris Hilton in his parents' bedroom, and took underwater pictures of people learning to swim in San Francisco."

"He photographed it all with a hazy familiarity and an eye for the idiosyncratic and ironic. He hoped that by focusing on daily life, Kerry once said, he would capture something mysterious that was just out of view. When you slow life down, and look in between those big events that you think to capture, you see the stuff that people live every day, and that's what really hits home."

A 1969 military psychiatric review labeled Larry Sultan anxiety-prone and a left-out observer, a trait that informed his photographic perspective on American domestic life. His career from the 1970s until his death in 2009 spanned documentary, fiction and appropriation. He photographed middle-class San Fernando Valley homes rented for porn shoots, made a portrait of Paris Hilton in her parents' bedroom, and shot underwater images of people learning to swim in San Francisco. He worked with a hazy familiarity and an eye for the idiosyncratic and ironic, aiming to capture everyday moments that reveal deeper emotional truths. Water Over Thunder collects that report and Sultan's writing.

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