| Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | | James Fee | Epiphany | | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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Larry Sultan
Boxers, Mission Hills
1999
© Larry Sultan
LL/16181
Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
Pornography is a genre that's in your face; its "'aesthetic" (if it can be called that) is to put its subject right up front and make it explicit hard core so that nothing is left to the imagination. When Larry Sultan decided to document the porno industry in his series "The Valley" he took the opposite approach. His photographs are circumspect. They work around the edges of the scene and mostly avoid sex itself.
Sultan's real subject is the in-between moments, the quick nap or stolen bit of solitude between takes, the endless waiting that all filmmaking entails. In this photograph, only the light stanchion in the foreground makes it clear that we're on location with a movie crew of some kind. But what kind? Animal instincts are present in the way that the dogs gnaw on bones given to them, perhaps, to keep them quiet. The curve of each dog's back leads our eye to the similar shape of the woman's platform shoe with a stiletto heel, which is the one detail that might alert us to what kind of movie this is.
Sultan says the woman owns both the dogs and the house, which she rents to companies making porn flicks in which she then performs.
[Originally published in West Magazine : April 2, 2006, p.13]
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