Parents, porn sets and Bob’s Big Boy combos: how Larry Sultan photographed American domestic life

2026-02-02 - 05:15

He shot 100 kitschly decorated homes rented out for porn shoots – and spent nine years on a project about his mum and dad. Has any photographer better captured everyday America? A psychiatric review of Larry Sultan, carried out by the military in 1969, described the American as an anxiety-prone individual who felt like a “left-out observer looking inside”. Sultan may not have been fit for service but, with that short phrase, the report identified the essential quality that would make him a great photographer of American domestic life. The report is included in a new book, Water Over Thunder, published in collaboration with Sultan’s widow Kerry and son Max. In a career that began in the 1970s and lasted until his death in 2009 at the age of 63, Sultan was never confined to a single genre, but rather moved between documentary, fiction and appropriation. He photographed the ordinary middle-class homes of the San Fernando Valley in California rented out for porn shoots, made a portrait of Paris Hilton in his parents’ bedroom, and took underwater pictures of people learning to swim in San Francisco. Continue reading...