Helen Shaw on Larry Sultan

Larry Sultan, Business Page (1985)

Helen Shaw has an interesting piece in this week’s issue. Titled “Out of Focus,” it’s a review of Sharr White’s play Pictures From Home, an adaptation of Larry Sultan’s 1992 photo-memoir of the same name. Shaw pans the play, but praises Sultan’s photos, a selection of which, she says, is projected on a wall, part of the stage set. She says of Sultan’s images,

His pieces gleam with a baked Southern California palette: jacaranda light, golf-course-green carpeting, and the parents’ burnished, teak-dark tans. 

She says that White’s play introduced her to Sultan’s work, “which knocked me sideways.” I know the feeling. That’s the way I felt when I first discovered it. His Business Page (1985) is one of my all-time favourite photos (see above). 

For an excellent essay on Sultan’s work, see Philip Gefter’s “Sex and Longing in Larry Sultan’s California Suburbs” (newyorker.com, April 9, 2017).