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Larry Sultan Quotes

Photographer

Larry Sultan was an influential American photographer known for his unique style and profound insights into social reality. His work often focuses on the details of family, community, and everyday life, documenting the changes in American society across different historical periods.

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All Looks Photograph Challenges Goes On Ifs Important Matter Photography Real Subject Matter

Famous Larry Sultan Quotes

“Photography is there to construct the idea of us as a great family and we go on vacations and take these pictures and then we look at them later and we say, 'Isn't this a great family?' So photography is instrumental in creating family not only as a memento, a souvenir, but also a kind of mythology.”

Looks Kind Ideas Goes On Creating Photography Mythology Vacation Constructs Souvenirs Great Family Memento

Author:Larry Sultan

“Like a ventriloquist who laughs at his dummy's jokes, I keep trying to make photographs that seduce me into believing in the image - all the time knowing better, but believing anyway.”

Trying Believe Laughing Knowing Jokes Photograph Keep Trying Seducing Dummy Knowing Better

Author:Larry Sultan

“I love making pictures, even if most of the results are lousy.”

Ifs Results Love Making

Author:Larry Sultan

“What's important to me is that [photographs] have the appearance of being documents of what goes on. I like the illusion of veracity, that they look like life rather than movie stills. I don't want them to look fabricated.”

Want Looks Stills Important Goes On Illusion Photograph Appearance Documents What's Important Veracity

Author:Larry Sultan

“Ambiguity is really important to me. Part of the difficulty facing photographers is that almost any subject matter has accumulated a representational history, so to find a new discursive space, a space to wander around those subject matters, is a real challenge.”

Important Real Matter Challenges Space Subjects Difficulty Photographer Wander Ambiguity Subject Matter

Author:Larry Sultan

“...when it comes down to making work that really sings, I don't know if I can teach any of it. I don't even know if I can do any of it half the time. It's so much about failure, it's so much about making pictures that are so utterly boring and overstated, you're endlessly disappointed. And in that process you hopefully find something that draws you back and calls to you.”

Ifs Knows I Can Process Can Do Half Teach Draws Boring Hopefully Disappointed

Author:Larry Sultan

“I'm very interested in making the photographs look real, but a lot of them are highly synthetic. They're hybrids, located somewhere between the found and the constructed.”

Looks Real Found Photograph Hybrid Synthetic

Author:Larry Sultan

“...I think finding that room to make pictures that don't jump off the wall as, or detonate as dramatic, either in lighting or in form or in composition or in subject matter, but more ordinary, that's the challenge.”

Thinking Matter Form Challenges Rooms Subjects Wall Findings Ordinary Dramatic Composition Lighting Subject Matter Off The Wall

Author:Larry Sultan

“Literature especially has an interesting relationship to photography - to observation, to description, to fiction: taking something that you see and elaborating, jamming, and I think, staging.... taking that moment of observation and letting it go, giving it some wings, following it, rather than nailing it. You're riffing off of reality.”

Thinking Giving Moments Reality Literature Interesting Fiction Photography Wings Following Observation Description That Moment Let It Go Staging

Author:Larry Sultan

About the Author

Born: July 13, 1946
Died: December 13, 2009
Known for: Photographer
Quotes: 9

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Looks Photograph Challenges Goes On Ifs Important Matter Photography Real Subject Matter

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