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Image of Mom Posing by Green Wall and Dad Watching T.V.

Mom Posing by Green Wall and Dad Watching T.V.
Photograph

1984
41 x 47 1/2 in. (104.14 x 120.65 cm)

Larry Sultan (New York, New York, 1946 - 2009, Greenbrae, California)

Object Type: Photograph
Medium and Support: Color coupler print on paper
Credit Line: Museum purchase with funds contributed by the Council of 100.
Accession Number: 1996.19.01

Exhibition
The House Imaginary, April 20, 2018 – August 19, 2018, Second Floor North, Second Floor Central Skylight, and Third Floor South Galleries, San José Museum of Art.

Stanley Cup Wager, July 11 - November 11, 2016, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA.

Post-Portrait, October 9, 2014 - January 18, 2015, New Wing, First Floor, Gibson Family Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

Degrees of Separation: Contemporary Photography from the Permanent Collection, July 22, 2010 - March 13, 2011, New Wing, Second Floor, North Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection, July 30, 2007 - September 9, 2007, San José Museum of Art.

Is the Medium the Message?: Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection, March 2, 2002 - June 2, 2002, New Wing, Metro A, Skylight and South Galleries, Second Floor, San José Museum of Art.

Into the 21st Century: Selections from the Permanent Collection, May 22 -September 12, 1999, Second floor, New Wing, San José Museum of Art.

Photographic Highlights from the Permanent Collection, August 12, 1998 - January 3, 1999, Focus Gallery, San José Museum of Art.

Larry Sultan: Pictures from Home, October 24, 1992 - January 31, 1993, First Floor South Gallery, New Wing, San José Museum of Art.

SJMA Label Text


Post-Portrait (2014-2015)

How we see ourselves is not always how the photographer chooses to show us. Here, Larry Sultan posed his parents and forbade them to smile. He imposed the emotional drama by directing them. His parents, however, contended that they did not see themselves in his images. They saw this story as completely manufactured—a work of fiction. However, as Sultan has asserted, photography is not truthful.


Beyond Tradition: Permanent Collection Photographs (2003)

Larry Sultan’s narrative series examines the deceptive qualities of the medium of photography. From corny family snapshots to slick advertising images, Sultan asserts that photography can be used to build up false expectations over a lifetime, ultimately resulting in profound disappointment. Sultan expresses this idea through a ten-year photographic project focusing on his father, documenting the frustrations and pressures of an aging executive forced into early retirement. His father’s situation affected familial relationships and his identity as a man. The American dream promised in glossy magazine images was essentially false advertising. That picture-perfect life was utterly unattainable.

Pillaging family photo albums and home movies, Sultan gathered images from his parent’s early life together, with all their youth, hopes, and dreams intact. At the same time, he photographed them in the present day, in moody psychologically charged compositions dramatizing their isolation from each other and emphasizing their age, as seen in “Mom posing by green wall and Dad watching TV.” With this contemporary image of an indifferent, alienated couple, he juxtaposed grids of faded and grainy portrait enlargements from distant, happier times. The configuration reads like a storyboard of a lifelong relationship -–from the youthful optimism for the future, to the twilight of regrets and broken dreams.

However, as Sultan’s thesis asserts, photography is not truthful. He posed his parents in the present-day photographs and forbade them to smile. They contend that they do not see themselves in his images. He has imposed the emotional drama by directing them. The way his parents see it, and actually in fact, the story is completely manufactured – a work of fiction.

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Exhibition List
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Dimensions
  • Image Dimensions: 41 x 47 1/2 in. (104.14 x 120.65 cm)

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