Larry Sultan interview

[jtk]

https://www.americansuburbx.com/2012/01/interview-ben-sloat-with-larry-sultan.html

" Part of the difficulty facing photographers is that almost any subject matter has accumulated a representational history, so to find a new discursive space, a space to wander around those subject matters, is a real challenge. If I know too much, if the narrative is too well formed, I’m making pictures that are illustrative, and as a maker, that’s not interesting. As a viewer, that’s not interesting. "

"I’ve actually thought about stopping photographing for a while and just writing, maybe that would get closer to the bone."


Larry Sultan had a reflex Graflex for sale, 3.25X4.25 when he was an instructor at San Francisco Art Institute, a few years after I decided on a different path. I decided not to buy that camera.

In this interview, Sultan doesn't find illustrative photos interesting...whereas me, I like to see how the a photographer has dealt with the challenge of the subject. I think some "art photographers" might find their work more fulfilling if they embraced challenges, just as commercial photographers typically do...rather than merely capturing moments.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Or that after having co-created 'Evidence' which made such a major impact early in his career (and created a new 'discursive space' of the sort he talks of), he spent the following decades trying to do something just as original in art/ academic terms and (to his mind) failing. Not that unusual in wider academia, especially amongst his generation.

 

[jtk]

Or that after having co-created 'Evidence' which made such a major impact early in his career (and created a new 'discursive space' of the sort he talks of), he spent the following decades trying to do something just as original in art/ academic terms and (to his mind) failing. Not that unusual in wider academia, especially amongst his generation.

Please expand on your observation. What are you trying to say? I might agree if you expressed yourself more fully.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Valley/d..._rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=VWK4QTHSFYTYCXDQDZGF

 

[Lachlan Young]

Please expand on your observation. What are you trying to say? I might agree if you expressed yourself more fully.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Valley/d..._rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=VWK4QTHSFYTYCXDQDZGF

Been trying not to write an essay... Essentially, I think he had a prolonged period of struggling with being acclaimed as a pioneering conceptual artist using aspects of photographic archives & what his own perceptions of 'photography' were. His later work, as much as he tries to put literary dress on it, is largely social documentary with a mildly surrealised veneer & even then it definitely lacks the tongue-in-a-light-socket effect of 'Evidence'. In consequence, there's perhaps a case to be made that later in life, he came to regret having been too concerned with being a 'photographer' rather than a contemporary artist who used photography as part of their practice alongside other media?

 

[jtk]

Seems reasonable, based on the evidence of his work... I like your "tongue-in-light-socket" phrase and I'm not at all a fan of the recent stuff we see online. Age happens.

 

[Lachlan Young]

"tongue-in-light-socket"

Can't claim any great originality for it - it was Clive James who used essentially that phrase (it's about 16 paragraphs in in the linked article) to describe encountering clips of the Japanese game show 'Za Gaman' or 'Endurance' for the first time.