Larry Sultan – Swimmers

During a talk he gave to his students at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 1980, Larry Sultan opened up about the challenges he faced with his latest series of photographs featuring swimmers in the community pools of the Bay Area. The young photographer struggled to justify this new body of work, as the […]

LARRY SULTAN & MIKE MANDEL: “EVIDENCE”

  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 […]

LARRY SULTAN & MIKE MANDEL: “Matrix / Berkeley 61” (1983)

By Constance Lewallen, Berkeley Art Museum & Film Archive, Early May – Early June, 1983 The myth of the photograph as a perfect analogue of reality persists to this day. Though the photograph continues to be used as evidence-by police, by news media-we now know that a photograph cannot be totally objective. Every news photographer […]

Evidence – Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel (1977)

In 1977, photographers Larry Sultan (USA) and Mike Mandel (USA) published a book of photographs entitled Evidence. Accompanied by an exhibition in the same year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this project was the culmination of a three-year search through the files and archives of over one hundred American government agencies, educational […]