“Between 1978 and 1982 I photographed people leaning to swim in several pools in San Francisco. I was interested in making pictures that were excessively physical, sensual, and painterly. They were inspired by the Red Cross Swimming and life Saving Manuals and made with a small underwater camera. They were made at a time when I found that much of my artistic activity was cut off from my body. The activity of photographing and the pictures themselves frightened me. As it turned out I had good reason to be scared. As one critic put it ‘We thought you were a conceptualist when it turns out that your are merely an expressionist.’ These pictures were exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Light Gallery in Los Angeles.”

Larry Sultan