Thanks for the correction, reader 'K' made re: today's post on Tina Barney. Naively, I attributed a shot by Larry Sultan to Tina Barney {above}
The photograph, of his parents, is part of a decade long series, Sultan worked on during the 70s and 80s. His father, Irvin, had recently been forced into retirement from his position as VP of Schick razor company. As initially conceived, the project was to be about “what happens when – as I interpreted my father’s fate – corporations discard their no-longer-young employees, and how the resulting frustrations and feelings of powerlessness find their way into family relations,” explains Sultan.
The similarities between Barney and Sultan's work are obvious. However Sultan's work invites you into a little grittier, suburban -less patrician- world {one series includes shots taken on porn sets} While I love the patrician elegance of Barney's work, Sultan's work is equally as beautiful and 'textured'.
"The daily practice of a photographer is to be distanced, to have a little bit of room between what you're doing and how you see, what you look at. For me the biggest surprise was that the distance I thought I needed as a photographer slipped. It wasn't about 'these' people it was about 'us'."
sorry Tina, sorry Larry......Thank you, K, for the clue in.
3 comments:
Excellent follow up correction Megan. That was nice of you.
I like Tina Barney but Sultan's images of his parents are very moving. There's a kind of underlying sadness in each one, don't you think. Similar to Bill Viola's work, you keep expecting something, and nothing much to happen, at the same time.
The dogs in the last photo look like they're either praying or bowing!
I love this Larry Sultan book. It is out of print.
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