The Valley / Statement + History
The cast and crew have gathered in the front yard of a ranch-style house, a few blocks from where I went to high school in the San Fernando Valley. Women in six-inch heels sink into the lawn; men push around camera equipment, anxious about losing the light. They are preparing to film a scene in which four blond housewives in a convertible are pursued and overtaken by two men in an appliance-repair van. In the golden afternoon light the neighbors have come out to water their lawns and witness the scene.
It is common for adult-film companies to shoot in tract houses — the homes of dentists and attorneys and day traders whose family photographs can be seen in the background, and whose decorating tastes give the films their particular look. It’s as if one family went on vacation for a few days, leaving everything in the house intact, and another family, an odd assembly of unrelated adults, has temporarily taken up residence. While the film crew and talent are hard at work in the living room, I wander through the house peering into the lives of the people who live there. I feel like a forensic photographer searching out evidence.
In these films, lazy afternoons are interrupted not by noisy children but by the uncontrollable desires of delivery boys, baby sitters, coeds and cops. They crowd in the master bedrooms and spill out onto the patios and into the pools that look just like our neighbors’ pools, like our pool. And by photographing this I’m planted squarely in the terrain of my own ambivalence — that rich and fertile field that stretches out between fascination and repulsion, desire and loss. I’m home again.
Larry Sultan

Selected Exhibitions
2007
Domus Atrium 02
Salamanca, Spain
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Chicago, Illinois
Alexandre Pollazzon Gallery
London, England
2006
Campus Galerie
University of Bayreuth, Germany
Jackson Fine Art
Atlanta, Georgia
2005
Museé Del I’Elysée
Lausanne, Switzeland
2005
Maes & Matthys Gallery
Antwerp Belgium
2004
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco, California
Galerie Thomas Zander
Koln, Germany
Janet Borden Gallery
New York, New York
The Apartment
Athens, Greece
2003
Stephen Wirtz Gallery
San Francisco, California
Isabella Brancolini Art Contemporane Gallery
Florence, Italy
2002
Reflex Modern Art
Amsterdam, Netherlands
2004
Picturing the Naked Truth
Joe Jarrell
San Francisco Chronicle
Larry Sultan: The Valley
Clark Buckner
Strethcer.org
Star Maps San, Fernando Valley Style
Tessa DeCarlo
New York Times
Larry Sultan: The Valley Review
Glen Helfand
Artforum
2001
Larry Sultan The Valley
Ken Johnson
New York Times
1999
Sunset Porno and the Steamy, Steamy Suburbs. A Sneak Peak behind the Scenes in Everyday L.A.
Vogue Hommes
2004
The Valley
Larry Sultan
Scalo Verlag AG
Zurich, Switzerland
2010
Katherine Avenue
Larry Sultan
Steidl
Hannover, Germany
2008
This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in L.A. Photographs
Bohn-Spector, Claudia Watts, Jennifer Merrell
Library West Hall and Boone Gallery
2006
Art Photography Now
Susan Bright
ClickDoubleClick: The Documentary Factor
Thomas Weski
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König
Koln, Germany
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Belgacom Foundation Brussels
Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archives
BPR Hannover
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Mallorca Foundation
MOCA Los Angeles
Oakland Museum of California
Princeton University
White Cube
Whitney Museum of American Art
Yale University