Larry Sultan Evidence - Larry Sultan

Evidence: Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel / Statement + History

Untitled Evidence / 1977

From 1975-1977, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel selected photographs from a multitude of images that previously existed solely within the boundaries of the industrial, scientific, governmental and other institutional sources from which they were mined. The project, “Evidence”, was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was one of the first conceptual photographic works of the 1970’s to demonstrate that the meaning of a photograph is conditioned by the context and sequence in which it is seen.

The resulting collection exhibits a brilliant sensibility for the absurd and a keen awareness of the complexity that the single image possesses when viewed outside its original context. Some of the photographs are hilarious, others are perplexing, but it’s in their isolation from their original context that these images take on meanings that address the confluence of industry and corporate mischief, ingenuity and pseudo-science. The book has been recognized as a precursor to subsequent postmodern strategies of photo practice.

Selected Exhibitions

2014
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

2013
Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco

2012
The New Museum, New York
Kunsthalle Krems, Krems

2011
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg

2010
FotoMuseum, Winterthur
Berlin Biennial, Berlin

2009
PhotoEspana, Madrid

2005
Photographers Gallery, London
Vassar College Art Gallery

2004
Center for Creative Photography, Tucson
Stephen Wirtz Gallery

1997
UCLA Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, Los Angeles

1994
Center for Creative Photography, Tucson

1985
Barbican Museum, London
Centre Pompidou, Paris

1979
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

1978
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard

1977
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Books

2012
Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel
Verlag Der Buchhandlung Walther König

2003
Evidence (second edition)
Published by Distributed Art Publishers, New York, NY

1977
Evidence (first edition)
self-published

Public Collections

Baltimore Museum of Art
Center for Creative Photography
Deichtorhallen Hamburg - Falckenberg Collection
Fondation A Stichting, Brussels
FotoMuseum, Winterthur
MMK Frankfurt
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Tate Modern