Photography has always been seen as a documentary tool. Many artist such as Larry Sultan have used this notion of photography as a document to push the viewers to reevaluate that claim. In his project "Pictures from Home" he photographs his parents, uses old photos of them, home video stills and text to try and understand his parents and their lifestyle. This life portrait of his parents evokes issues of aging, relationships, family values and exposes the ideals his parents had for their life that he does not connect to. Sultan undermines the claim that photos are always an accurate form of documentation by pointing out the posing and known use of self representation. He complied this project in a photobook which you should definitely take a look at and is simply titled "Pictures from Home".
"Mom in the Garage"
"Dad on the Bed"
"Practicing Golf Swing" 1986
"Mom Posing by Green Wall and Dad Watching TV" 1984
You can look at a few good links of people reviewing this body of work
here and
here oh and
here which also has a video of him and his dad!
Larry Sultan unfortunately passed away back in 2009 at the age of 63. He had a successful career and left behind very interesting projects that are still great to learn from.
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