Evidence a witty and provocative look at contemporary American culture Larry Sultan Photography

In 1977, photographers Larry Sultan (USA) and Mike Mandel (USA) published a book of photographs entitled Evidence. Accompanied by an exhibition in the same year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this project was the culmination of a three-year search through the files and archives of over one hundred American government agencies, educational institutions, and corporations, such as the Bechtel Corporation, General Atomic Company, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the San Jose Police Department and the United States Department of the Interior.

The original pictures Sultan and Mandel collected were made as documents and objective records of activities and situations: the scenes of crimes, aeronautical engineering tests, industrial experiments, among other subjects. Sifting through some two million images, Mandel and Sultan assembled a careful sequence of 59 pictures.

Evidence is, as the artists stated back in the 1970s, ‘a poetic exploration upon the restructuring of imagery.’ Pictures that once served a functional purpose in the world are, in this exhibition, stripped of their explanatory captions and institutional contexts, carefully sequenced, and presented as expressive artefacts. In this new setting, the images testify to cryptic and dubious rituals, to a culture of dehumanising, ambiguous institutional values, to mid-century industry regarded as a religion.

Although the exhibition carefully articulates the reading of the photographs in terms of their ‘documentary’ origins, the photographs are reproduced without captions identifying specific images or their sources. The photographs here serve as answers to questions long ago abandoned. Faced with a world of mysterious events and unfathomable activities, we are provided with only the sequential narrative of the book and are actively required to participate in creating its meaning.

Evidence. Photographs by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel. Text by Sandra Phillips and Robert Forth, Distributed Art Publishers’, New York, 2003. 108 pp., 25 black-and-white and 61 duotone illustrations, 9¾x9″.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- c reported that one of its most beloved faculty members, Larry Sultan, died of cancer on Sunday. He was a distinguished professor in both the undergraduate Photography Program and the Graduate Program in Fine Arts and had taught at CCA since 1988.

Tammy Rae Carland, chair of the Photography Program, says, "Larry Sultan was one of the most compassionate, generous educators I've ever known. He was a great mentor, a great teacher, a great colleague. He had a lot of success in his own career but continued to be vital to the Photography Program. He really cared about its pedagogical development, about keeping it current and lively. He was incredibly generous with his students, always sharing his network, his experience, his connections. He got a tremendous amount of pleasure out of teaching."

Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, says, "Larry Sultan was a leading figure in the Bay Area art community. He was one of our great friends and a gifted artist. His work has been shown in our museum regularly since the 1970s. His responses to our world have always been both intensely personal and wonderfully humane, accessible, intelligent, and sympathetic."

Larry Sultan was born in New York in 1946 and moved with his family to Southern California in 1949. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He received a BA in 1968 from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an MFA in 1973 from the San Francisco Art Institute. In San Francisco he was represented by Stephen Wirtz Gallery.

In addition to his teaching career and extensive commercial work for 'W Magazine', 'Vanity Fair', and other important clients, he produced a large and widely influential body of personal work. His first major project was a collaboration with the artist Mike Mandel: a book of appropriated photographs titled 'Evidence' and a subsequent exhibition organized by SFMOMA in 1977. The pictures came from the files of government agencies, corporations, and research institutions, offering a witty and provocative look at contemporary American culture.

In 1992 Sultan compiled the book and accompanying exhibition "Pictures from Home". The decade-long project began when his father, a vice president at Schick Safety Razor Company, was forced into early retirement. Sultan started by photographing his parents and their home lives, then expanded the undertaking to include extensive diaristic writing, family artifacts, and stills from his parents' home movies.

Working in the San Fernando Valley on "Pictures from Home" led Sultan to his next project, "The Valley", an investigation of suburban houses used as sets for pornographic films. Like "Pictures from Home", the project focused on Southern California culture, engaging ideas of truth, fantasy, and artifice in the context of home and middle-class domesticity. "The Valley" was presented at SFMOMA in 2004 as a solo exhibition of more than 50 large-scale photographs shot between 1999 and 2003. In the pictures, mundane objects such as a roll of paper towels or a bored woman in high heels become symbolically charged, inviting speculation.

Sultan exhibited internationally throughout his career. His work is in the collections of SFMOMA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Tate Modern, London. He received numerous grants and awards, including five NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Tiffany Comfort Award, and a Fleishhacker Fellowship.

Ironische blik op omgeving

Larry Sultan (1946-2009), fotograaf

Sandra Smallenburg

Necrologie | Woensdag 16-12-2009 | Sectie: Kunst | Pagina: 09 | Sandra Smallenburg

Fotograaf Larry Sultan gebruikte zijn ouders als symbool voor het naoorlogse Amerika. Hij had een directe, harde stijl.

Merkwaardig toch dat hij er op iedere foto ouder uitziet dan ik eruit zie als ik zo oud ben als hij, schreef de Amerikaanse fotograaf Larry Sultan in het begin van zijn boek Pictures from Home (1992) over zijn vader Irvin. Jarenlang had Sultan zijn ouders met de camera gevolgd in hun Californische buitenwijk. Genadeloos had hij hun gezapige leven vastgelegd in felrealistische fotos: vader die luiert bij het zwembad of golf speelt op het hoogpolige tapijt van de woonkamer. Moeder - gefacelift en nog altijd slank - die in de keuken een kalkoen bereidt. En dat ene, fraaie portret van zijn vader, Dad on Bed, van een man strak in pak op de rand van het bed die een tergend uitgebluste indruk maakt. Nu blijkt dat Larry Sultan nooit meer de leeftijd zal bereiken die zijn vader toen had. Hij overleed afgelopen zondag in zijn woonplaats Greenbrae in Californië aan de gevolgen van kanker, op 63-jarige leeftijd.

Met zijn directe stijl, zijn harde kleurgebruik en persoonlijke onderwerpkeuze was Sultan van grote invloed op de generatie fotografen na hem. Al lang voor Richard Billingham koos hij zijn eigen familie als studieobject. En ver voor Martin Parr bevroeg hij het auteurschap van fotografie door met gevonden beelden te werken. Zijn eerste boek Evidence (1977) bestond uit documentaire fotos die hij uit beeldbanken van bedrijven en instanties had geplunderd.

Sultan was geboren in Brooklyn, maar groeide op in de San Fernando Valley in Californië. Zijn vader was een vertegenwoordiger die zich opwerkte tot onderdirecteur van de scheermesjesfabriek Schick, zijn moeder een huisvrouw die op latere leeftijd carrière maakte als makelaar. De Sultans stonden, met hun gestage stijging op de sociale ladder, symbool voor het naoorlogse Amerika. Dat begreep Sultan goed toen hij begin jaren tachtig zijn ouders begon te volgen in een project dat tien jaar zou duren.

In 2004 verscheen het fotoboek The Valley, waarvoor Sultan een minder gezapige kant van het leven in de San Fernando Valley vastlegde. Hij bezocht de talloze sets voor pornofilms die ook in de villas van suburbia te vinden zijn. En ook uit deze fotos sprak de ironische blik waarmee Sultan zijn omgeving bekeek. Porno was in zijn ogen vooral iets lamlendigs.

Foto-onderschrift: Sultan: Sharon Wild (2003)
Trefwoord: Fotografie
Persoon: Larry Sultan

Op dit artikel rust auteursrecht van NRC Handelsblad BV, respectievelijk van de oorspronkelijke auteur.

the Dutch East Indies Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment the Tolstoi of Photography

Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi’s funeral in India in 1948 and the last (1949) stage of the Chinese Civil War. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the Maoist People’s Republic. He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was falling to the communists. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch.

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from the 17th century Cardinal de Retz: “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif” (”There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: ” “Photographier: c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait.”

Both titles came from publishers. Tériade, the Greek-born French publisher whom Cartier-Bresson idolized, gave the book its French title, Images à la Sauvette, which can loosely be translated as “images on the run” or “stolen images.” Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment. Margot Shore, Magnum’s Paris bureau chief, did the English translation of Cartier-Bresson’s French preface.

“Photography is not like painting,” Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative,” he said. “Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

the Dutch East Indies Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment the Tolstoi of Photography

Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi’s funeral in India in 1948 and the last (1949) stage of the Chinese Civil War. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the Maoist People’s Republic. He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was falling to the communists. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch.

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from the 17th century Cardinal de Retz: “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif” (”There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: ” “Photographier: c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait.”

Both titles came from publishers. Tériade, the Greek-born French publisher whom Cartier-Bresson idolized, gave the book its French title, Images à la Sauvette, which can loosely be translated as “images on the run” or “stolen images.” Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment. Margot Shore, Magnum’s Paris bureau chief, did the English translation of Cartier-Bresson’s French preface.

“Photography is not like painting,” Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative,” he said. “Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

Revolution in Photography Alexander Rodchenko Avant Garde Graphic Design

Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam presents a unique retrospective of the world-famous Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko. The exhibition will contain more then 200 vintage photographs some of which have never been exhibited in the West before. Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) is one of the great innovators of twentieth-century avant-garde art and one of its most versatile practitioners. Having first gained international acclaim as a painter, sculptor and graphic designer, Rodchenko took up the practice of photography in the early 1920s, convinced that it would become the artistic medium of his era. Over the course of the following two decades he developed a bold new vocabulary of acute camera angles, extreme foreshortenings of perspective and close-ups of surprising details. In addition to introducing design as an integral element of photography, Rodchenko’s approach balanced formal concerns with an interest in documenting the social and political life of the Soviet Union. In the process, he helped to change the way people perceived not only photography, but also the role of the photographer.

Tracking the development of his photographic work over the course of two decades, Revolution in Photography reveals the artist’s talent for experimentation as well as the extraordinary range of his work. From sharp-witted photomontage to documentary reportage in Moscow’s streets, from dynamic architectural studies to intimate portraits of his circle, Rodchenko’s photographic activity possessed a breath and scope matched by few artists of his day. Abandoning ‘pure’ art in favour of developing a visual language that could address a mass audience, Rodchenko applied himself as a photographer and designer to the production of posters, magazine and book design, advertisements for state-owned enterprises as well as photojournalism and other forms of documentary photography.

In presenting a comprehensive selection of his work, this exhibition offers a significant opportunity to re-evaluate Rodchenko’s achievements in photography as well as to reconsider the fertile and tumultuous moment in which he worked – a period that extended from the intellectually adventurous Lenin years to the repressive cultural regime initiated by Stalin. It also allows us to appreciate how fresh and daring his work still is today. Indeed, though more than half a century has passed since his death, his many significant accomplishments continue to influence a wide range of contemporary practitioners.

The exhibition Revolution in Photography is made in collaboration with the Moscow House of Photography.

What Makes A Photo Book A Bestseller? Photography

What Makes A Photo Book A Bestseller? 2009 Edition

Nov 16, 2009 By Conor Risch

Photo book publishing is not considered a highly profitable enterprise for publishers-- definitely not for photographers. Print runs are often small. Publishers who create art objects with beautiful paper and large trim-sizes can struggle to simply recoup their investment, and they increasingly rely on sales of high-priced special editions to help improve their margins. Dealers who sell collectible books in the secondary market probably see better profits than publishers or photographers.

Yet there is a big difference between books published for the fine art photography market and books that are “commercial,” which can appeal to wide audiences and sell tens of thousands of copies over several years. Print runs for commercial books are often larger, and publishers choose more economical trim sizes, paper and other materials. These steps keep retail prices down so books are accessible to wider audiences. For photographers with projects that have commercial potential, book publishing can be lucrative. Just ask Andrew Zuckerman about his books Wisdom or Creature, or talk to Joyce Tenneson, whose paperback edition of Wise Women is a perennial bestseller among photography books.

For some insight into the commercial photography book market, PDN recently obtained data from Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks retail book sales, to see which new titles are among the bestselling photography books this year.

Barack Obama not only boosted newspaper and magazine sales during his historic campaign for the presidency, he also gave the photo book market a bump. Obama: The Historic Front Pages (Sterling, $24.95), which looks at Obama’s run for president through news photographs and reporting from major newspapers worldwide, was the top seller in the photography category according to Nielsen Bookscan. A book by the Washington Post, The Inauguration Of Barack Obama: A Photographic Journal (Triumph Books, $29.95), placed third. These books didn’t mean big money for individual photographers, though, since they were compilations.

Scott Schuman’s The Sartorialist (Penguin, $25), a collection of the New York street fashion photographs that made Schuman famous in the blogosphere, is the highest-ranking new publication by an individual photographer. Released in August, this 512-page paperback—a big book at a low price—is creeping up on the Obama titles at number four on the bestseller list.

Earlier this year PDN wrote about The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan With Doctors Without Borders (First Second, $29.95), a paperback book that tells the story of a trip the late French photographer Didier Lefevre took into Afghanistan with the NGO Doctors Without Borders during the Afghan war with the Soviet Union ( “Exposures,” June 2009). The unique format of the book, which combines Lefevre’s storytelling and photographs with illustrations by popular graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert, expanded its audience by appealing to both photography and graphic novel audiences. Before its U.S. release this year, the book had reached bestseller status in several other countries, so it’s place at number 11 on the list is no surprise.

Top-selling animal photo books published this year includeElephant Reflections (University of California Press, $40.00), a book of photographs of African elephants by wildlife photographer Karl Ammann, and Dirty Bow Wow (Ten Speed Press, $14.95), an inexpensive book of portraits of dogs with their favorite toys, created by Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz, with photographs by Rick Hornick and Sandy Rivlin.

Though it just barely broke into the top 50, Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans (Steidl/The National Gallery of Art, $45), a re-release of Frank’s famous book with new essays by several critics and curators, was a bestseller this year thanks to a traveling exhibition that generated new interest in the book. (A reprint of The Americans, published by Steidl in Summer 2008, ranks 10th on the list for this year).

Other bestsellers include Natural Fashion (Thames & Hudson, $29.95), a book of Hans Silvester’s photographs of African tribal body decorations, and Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York (Ginko, $65), James Murray and Karla Murray’s typological look at small business storefronts.

And of course, The New Erotic Photography (Taschen, $29.95), a well-priced survey compiled by Dian Hanson and Eric Kroll that includes work by 55 photographers, is selling pretty well.

Books released in previous years that are among this year's bestsellers include Annie Leibovitz At Work; Alastair Fothergill's Planet Earth: As You've Never Seen It Before;Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs; and National Geographic: The Photographs. Two of the most important books about photography, Susan Sontag's On Photography, and Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida: Reflections On Photography, continue to sell long after their original publications.

Related: " Inside The Bestseller List," PDNOnline, September 11, 2008

Foto en copyright by G.P. Fieret the Movie Photography

Photographer Gerard Petrus Fieret treated his photos, most of which he took in the 1960s, in a way that would horrify other photographers or collectors. He was careless with chemicals, piled wet photos on top of one another so they stuck together, and stamped his name in critical places. In this portrait, director Frank van den Engel goes looking for the world hidden behind this exceptional and eccentric talent. He interviews colleagues, former models, and collectors, and visits the photographer in his completely neglected, decrepit house. Fieret comes across as a somewhat confused and distrustful old man with a wild beard, and at first glance you might dismiss him as a hobo for whom life has come to mean very little. But gradually, a tragic and fascinating story unfolds of an artist who went unappreciated until it was too late. He once sold his work for 100 euros per photo, but nowadays American collectors shell out thousands of dollars for a "Fieret." Meanwhile, Fieret bids life farewell and a handful of Dutch enthusiasts try to rescue negatives and photos from his disastrous house. Fieret died in January of this year.

De speelse en subtiel erotische vrouwen portretten van fotograaf Gerard Petrus Fieret zijn gewild en hangen voor duizenden dollars in een New Yorkse galerie. Fieret leeft intussen “beroofd” en vervuild tussen de uitwerpselen van zijn huisdieren. Als hij te ziek wordt om nog thuis te wonen, duikt onder de troep een schat aan foto’s en negatieven op.

Voor de volledig autonome fotograaf, dichter en tekenaar Fieret, vallen werk en leven samen. Zijn foto’s zijn zoals hijzelf: onaangepast, chaotisch en slordig, aangevreten en vol levenslust en humor. Op straat en in zijn vieze maar gezellige atelier fotografeert hij jarenlang “de caleidoscopische totaliteit van het leven”: schaars geklede en naakte vrouwen, zichzelf, zijn poes en zijn innig geliefde duiven. “Kijk, als je als kunstenaar dingen gaat doen die buiten de standaard vallen, wordt je als gek verklaard.”

Door een schrijnend contrast tussen de kunstenaar en de kunstwereld, deelt Fieret nooit mee in zijn internationale succes. ”Kunst is niet van enig belang uiteindelijk. Het is allemaal prothese.” Zijn laatste onderkomen is een vervallen portocabin op een landgoed bij Duindigt. Hij sterft in januari 2009 op 85-jarige leeftijd aan een longontsteking. ‘Foto en Copyright by G.P. Fieret’ gaat over de kunst en de laatste levensjaren van deze eigenzinnige Nederlandse fotograaf.

Regie: Frank van den Engel.
Productie: Zeppers Film & TV.

See for a review Foto En Copyright by G. P. Fieret...

Forthcoming publication Lisboa, cidade triste e alegre Victor Palla Costa Martins Photography

PALLA, VICTOR & COSTA MARTINS

Lisboa: cidade triste e alegre.

Lisboa, Pierre von Kleist Editions, 2009 orig cloth photo-pictorial dustjacket reprint of the original 1959 edition 175 pp 28 x 22 cm includes a supplement with a new introduction by Gerry Badger and a full transcription into English of the book's index superbly printed new

Lisboa: cidade triste e alegre – Lisbon: Sad and Happy City is a lovingly produced volume of poetry and richly printed images depicting the Portugese capital in the late 1950s.

For three years architects Victor Palla (1922-2005) and Costa Martins (1922-2006) recorded Lisbon street life shooting naturally lit black and white photographs influenced in no small part by the Italian neo-realist cinema of the time. Often their most engaging subjects were found in the then poor quarters of Bairro Alto and Alfama.

Interspersing the carefully laid out photographs in the book is the work of Lisbon’s poets, including poems by the melancholy recluse and creator of alter egos Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Certainly it must be the sadness of the poetry that is refered to in the title as there are no images here that evoke much sorrow, in fact some photographs of smiling shopkeepers are more picturesque than is helpful. Was life always so convivial during the Salazar regime?

On publication Lisboa: cidade triste e alegre met with critical indiference and no further editions followed the initial print run of 2,000 copies. However, like many books featured in The Photobook: A History (Volume 1, Phaidon, 2004) by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger the few remaining copies have seen their value rise dramatically, and the volume featured here was sold at auction for double the reserve price of £4,500 ($8,865) at Christie’s in London in May 2007.

The book has a 20 page index of photographic information detailing the architects use of Plus-X and Tri-X, Leica M3 and Leitz Elmar 50 and 90mm lenses, but despite their attention to detail Lisboa never quite enriches one’s understanding of the city to the degree that Brasaï‘s Séville en Fête (1956) enriches ones understanding that other great Iberian city.

Partly it is the breadth of coverege that gives the Hungarian exile the advantage. Palla and Martins produced a wonderful volume, but they never match the caught moments and eye for graphic form of the master Brassaï. Certainly some of the more touristy looking images would hve been better edited out (or, in that perrenial trick used when presenting lesser work, printed very large).

Of course it is often easier for an outsider to see the wholeness of a place, but then again Brassaï was a great photographer.

The dust jacket is printed with quotes on photography by a host of master photographers from Ansel Adams to Minor White. However, the quotes do not refer to the book.