chromogenic print, signed in ink on the reverse, framed, 1986, from the edition of 10

Larry Sultan, Pictures from Home (New York, 1992), p. 97

Larry Sultan: Here and Home (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2014), p. 87

Katherine A. Bussard, So the Story Goes (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2006), p. 109

Marianne Hirsch, ed., The Familial Gaze (Hanover, 1999), p. 10 and pl. 5

This chromogenic print is in generally excellent condition. The colors remain saturated with no apparent fading. In raking light, the following are visible: a few soft handling creases in the lower right portion of the image, which do not break the emulsion; and a few matte deposits in the upper portion of the image, possibly original retouching. The label on the reverse of the frame indicates that this print is from an edition of 10.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The Larry Sultan photographs offered here as Lots 114, 116, and 117 are from his seminal Pictures from Home series, and are collected in the book of the same title published in 1992.  In a remarkably varied career that began with his conceptual excursions with Mike Mandel and extended through his brilliant, bleak documentation of the pornographic film industry and beyond, Pictures from Home is the one series within Sultan’s oeuvre that involved subject matter of a deeply personal nature: his aging mother and father.  He began the series in 1983, after viewing home movies of his youth in the San Fernando Valley in the 1950s.  Individual frames from these movies were juxtaposed in the book with Sultan’s own pictures of his parents, which were poised between objectivity and affection. 

Sultan wrote, ‘What drives me to continue this work is difficult to name. It has more to do with love than with sociology, with being a subject in the drama rather than a witness. . . I realize that beyond the rolls of film and the few good pictures, the demands of my project and my confusion about its meaning, is the wish to take photography literally. To stop time. I want my parents to live forever' (Pictures from Home, p. 78).

Sultan is currently the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Larry Sultan: Here and Home.