The New Yorker & Me: Favorite Photo Reviews 8: Philip Gefter's "Sex and Longing in Larry Sultan's California Suburbs"

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Favorite Photo Reviews 8: Philip Gefter's "Sex and Longing in Larry Sultan's California Suburbs"

Larry Sultan, Business Page (1985)

This is the third post in my “Favorite Photo Reviews” series. Today’s pick is Philip Gefter’s “Sex and Longing in Larry Sultan’s California Suburbs” (“Photo Booth,” newyorker.com, April 9, 2017).

I chose this piece because, firstly, it introduced me to the work of an amazing photographer I’d never heard of before - Larry Sultan; and secondly, I love the title. The great thing about this review is the photography itself - eleven images, arranged slideshow-style. I remember flicking through them for the first time. I came to #4, Business Page (1985). It blew my mind. I’d never seen anything like it. I love light. I love shadows. I love reflections. This picture had all three of those elements, plus something ravishingly extra - illumination. The way the natural light illumines the newspaper page is extraordinary. It’s a dazzling, transfixing, original composition. It went directly into my personal collection of great photographs.

The writing in this piece in not too shabby either. I relish this observation: “Larry’s photographs possess a quality of hard-edged California light, heightened color, optical precision, and, often, domestic familiarity made more fascinating by the power of his imagination.”