Larry Sultan was a highly respected and incredibly talented California based photographer who lived from 1946 to 2009. Sultan studied political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Sultan attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he formally began his photography career. The majority of Sultan’s work consists of large-format color photographs. His work encompasses a range of different styles and subjects from more straight forward portraits of his parents, to raw, complicated portraits of workers in the sexual fantasy industry to vast landscapes of rural California. His work is active and exciting even when capturing the most dismal or plain subjects. He seamlessly blends myth and reality to allow readers not only
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With this project I didn’t feel particularly inspired at this beginning. Forcing myself to just keep shooting, for hours and hours, the same subjects, really pushed me to start directing my camera at scenes and lighting conditions I wouldn’t have thought to shoot before. I think a lot can be learned from when you think you've seen an object, person or place in every way you possibly can and then somehow keep making new photos of it. Really compelling and refreshing work can come out of boredom. When I found myself getting uninterested or feeling like a subject was getting repetitive those were the times where I found myself actually being genuinely, and novelly, creative. This is indubitably a lesson I wouldn’t have learned from shooting with film just out of the restrictive quality of the medium. Using a digital camera and being entirely uninhibited without worrying about wasting frames allowed me to shoot until I became bored and then keep shooting until I came up with photographs that actually felt new. One quote from the opening chapter of Pictures From Home ran through my head frequently while shooting and editing these photos: “Tonight, however, I am restless. I sit at the dining-room table; rummage through the refrigerator. What am I looking for?” This quote resonated with me because I often feel when shooting photos that I am looking for something. I feel sometimes that there is a pressure to reveal some deeper meaning or message with a photograph. To me the most successful photographers often don’t actually reveal anything at all, they are just able to articulate how they are seeing the world onto
With this project I didn’t feel particularly inspired at this beginning. Forcing myself to just keep shooting, for hours and hours, the same subjects, really pushed me to start directing my camera at scenes and lighting conditions I wouldn’t have thought to shoot before. I think a lot can be learned from when you think you've seen an object, person or place in every way you possibly can and then somehow keep making new photos of it. Really compelling and refreshing work can come out of boredom. When I found myself getting uninterested or feeling like a subject was getting repetitive those were the times where I found myself actually being genuinely, and novelly, creative. This is indubitably a lesson I wouldn’t have learned from shooting with film just out of the restrictive quality of the medium. Using a digital camera and being entirely uninhibited without worrying about wasting frames allowed me to shoot until I became bored and then keep shooting until I came up with photographs that actually felt new. One quote from the opening chapter of Pictures From Home ran through my head frequently while shooting and editing these photos: “Tonight, however, I am restless. I sit at the dining-room table; rummage through the refrigerator. What am I looking for?” This quote resonated with me because I often feel when shooting photos that I am looking for something. I feel sometimes that there is a pressure to reveal some deeper meaning or message with a photograph. To me the most successful photographers often don’t actually reveal anything at all, they are just able to articulate how they are seeing the world onto