A Psychological investigation of the
work of Larry Sultan ‘Pictures from Home’ (1982-92)
Larry Sultan, in an interview
with Sheryl Conkelton (Flintridge Foundation Awards for Visual Arts 1999/2000)
said,
‘When I was working on ‘Pictures
from Home’, my parents’ voices – their stories as well as their arguments
with my version of our shared history – were crucial to the book. They called
into question the documentary truth the pictures seemed to carry. I wanted to
subvert the sentimental home movies and snapshots with my more contentious
images of suburban daily life, but at the same time I wished to subvert my
images with my parents’ insights into my point of view’.
The family album is a visual
record, but also a volume of inter-relational family experiences, generally constructed
and presented as historical truth; a picture of, certainly to their owners, of
both visual and emotional reality. This document bears witness to our
connectedness with family, humanity and ourselves; for most of us it is often
the only proof of our existence. It tells the viewer what there is and how it
was, our own inventory of life. It creates a link with both the past and the
future and eventually, it provides the one and only link between ‘us’ and ‘there’
or ‘them’ and ‘then’. Cameras go with family life; they escort us around so
that we can prove that we where really here at all. A family’s photographic
album is generally about us now, but becomes a historic document of the
extended family and often, is all that remains of it. It seems you cannot claim
to have seen anything, been anywhere or ‘belonged’ unless you have photographed
it. It proves we had relationships.
The family album has its truths
of course, but the justification that it show how it really was, is not so
clear. It is a worthy document, however it also has a role as a defence against
our anxieties. Family albums actively promote nostalgia; one could argue that
photography, far from documenting the truth, succeeds more in hiding it, than
it does the revealing of it. Larry Sultan states,
‘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.’
I would like to discuss that
photographer Larry Sultan and his series of images that he published in 1992, ‘Pictures from Home’ are his family
photographs of his truth, outside the mythology of family. I attempt to disclose
more about his relationship with his parents, to read into the images something
of his inner world that initially the images don’t show to us. Sultan
acknowledges that he is producing a document of family images from his point of
view and that he shows, through them, how he gains awareness of the ‘mythology’
of the family document. We see also his need to ‘subvert [his] images with
[his] parents’ insights into [his] point of view’.
Sultan was very aware of his involvement,
of the fact that he was colluding and appearing symbolically, and not
literally, in the pictures in which he produces. In his words, the images
became a portrait of ‘us’. He goes on to say,
‘The daily practice of a
photographer is to be distanced, to have a little bit of room between what you’re
doing and how you see, what you look at. For me the biggest surprise was that
the distance I thought I needed as a photographer slipped. It wasn’t about ‘these’
people it was about ‘us’.’
The words of Larry Sultan
describing his production of this series of images photographed for a decade up
to 1992 for me show so strongly, and certainly when viewed through the lens of psychoanalytical
theory, an exhibition of a son attempting to force himself into the family
portrait. This is his Oedipal struggle visualised through photography. Not the
first attempt, one could imagine, but with photography, he shows us his need to
gain insight into his Oedipal dilemma. Larry Sultan again,
‘What drives me to continue this
work is difficult to name. It has more to do with love than with sociology.
With being a subject in the drama rather than a witness, and in the odd and
jumbled process of working, everything shifts: the boundaries blur, my distance
slips, the arrogance and illusion of immunity falters. I wake up on the middle
of the night, stunned and anguished. These are my parents. From that simple
fact, everything follows.’
Although he doesn’t appear in
these images, his presence is felt. What we see is the son who was left out,
who still remains outside, beyond the dyad of the overbearing father who
disallows access to his protected mother. In Merriah Lambs essay on this series
of pictures, entitled ‘Reconstructing
family: Larry Sultan’s pictures from home’, provides an insight into the
use of the camera to enquire into family dynamics and as the title suggests, a
rebuilding of the family unit.
‘Sultan understands the camera’s
function as the family’s primary instrument of self-knowledge and
self-representation by which family memory perpetuates, using it to re-examine
family, but also undermining any claim that photographs and their arrangements
are necessarily an accurate form of documentation of family life’.
She goes on to say,
‘Pictures from home is the sons
account, a representation of the trawling through of these memories and what we
see is quite disturbing. Through the production of the family album, we want to
idolised the image of our world and our place within it and more importantly
our relationships throughout our existence’.
The first thing to note is that the
traditional role of the family albums production is reversed here. The son
photographs the parents. The story will be different, the social norm is for
the parents to display their interpretation of history, their sense of power, edited
and presented, to be used as an aid memoir but also it is the story of the
compilers of this story, to corroborate one persons recollection. Sultan has an
opportunity here, to engage with this album dynamic once again, but this time on
his terms. On the surface, he gives his sitters a voice, literally and aesthetically,
but the most present person is the photographer; in these portraits, he makes
up his own experience of the events.
I would like to bring an Oedipal
interpretation to these images, in association with a phantasy of my view of
what Sultan is saying. There is a physical space he occupies in these pictures,
between his parents; it is of an elevated status, his size and strength is
noticed, there is an achievement of some kind. Sigmund Freud introduced the
concept of the Oedipal Struggle in his ‘Interpretation
of Dreams’, (1899). It is his theory of relationships, gender assignment
and sexuality. Although Freud believed this was a stage of psychosexual development
to be negotiated during the Phallic stage (3-6), the psychoanalyst, Melanie
Klein, would place this stage at much earlier, as early as the oral stage (aged
1). What is seen, in the pictures, is a renegotiated Oedipal struggle,
re-visited perhaps because of its failed resolution in early age or simply an
illustration of his recollection of that experience; a photographic symbol of
the echo from an earlier experiences of a difficult phase of development. Can
this Oedipal concept be seen within the work of Larry Sultan? Are these images
a visual metaphor describing a son’s competition for his mother? Does he view
his father as a rival for her attentions and affections?
If this stage is not negotiated,
or only part negotiated then, a continual struggle ensues. Repressed feelings
from failed attempts form conflicts and throughout life an attempt is made to seek
out its resolution. In the case of these series of images, Sultan attempts
again to negotiate its resolution. The Oedipal dilemma can be seen simply as a
realisation of the dynamics within a triadic relationship moving from a dyadic
one, or can be a more dramatic visualisation of a painful process of reconciliation
of a conflict, essentially, in wrestling power from dad and gaining access to
mum. In other words, from the state of ‘me’ to realisation of the ‘other’, or a
more dramatic outburst of repressed resentments held back from earlier failures
of it’s negotiation.
As initially conceived by Sultan,
the project was to be about ‘what happens when – as I interpreted my father’s
fate – corporations discard their no-longer-young employees, and how the
resulting frustrations and feelings of powerlessness find their way into family
relations.’
These pictures, have been taken
at a time when his father was forced into retirement; his patriarchal power is on
the wane, an ideal opportunity for such an unconscious attack, for the son to
gain access to his mother previously denied. To gain access to a mother denied
for so long. The situation of the weakened father coincides with mother’s newfound
power (her business was in the ascendancy).
The images are of the everyday, located
in their home, however there is a sense of a wedge being forced between the
main protagonists, is it simply the wedge of the obtrusive lens? No, it is the
presence of Sultan Jr. we see, and this is what interests me in this series. It
is more than a document of his parents, his background; the photographs show an
interaction between them which indicate more that what we see on the surface. The
boy is present in these images and it is a boy who wants access.
While describing the series for
the Independent Michael Collins 2010 says,
‘The most magical and redeeming
quality of photography, especially given the vulgar and superficial way it is
so often employed, is that a photograph will reveal, subtly or otherwise, how
the photographer was engaging with the subject. Our reading of family pictures
is the most sophisticated of all, because our familial relationships are the
most complicated, critical and contrary of all.’
The infant attempts an
understanding of his relationship with that of his parents and his position in
that dyad, at many stages of his life. Upon the realisation of the existence of
the other, which may be manifested in his father’s rage and jealousy, he
negotiates this place. These images are Sultans need to get between the two
main protagonists, a photographic illustration of the attempt to engage with
them both after the original ousting from the primal scene. Now is another
chance, through photography, of making sense of his position of power in this
triad. We are looking at Sultans Oedipal conflict revisited, for it will be his
only opportunity, as Sultan Jr. was to die of cancer in 2009 in his 63rd
year. As we stare into this world of his parents Sultan reveals the
psychological concept, that of the Oedipal dilemma. One that Collins alludes to,
but does not name as such;
‘And yet, this was his parents’
home, the site where all those fraught hopes, understandings and
misunderstandings, securities and insecurities, would be encountered over and
over again, in an endless search, a longing, for a resolution of family and
home.’
In this following statement
Sultan admits to the inability to name what he is trying to do, the exchange
below also illustrates clearly that father is still very much the patriarch,
maintaining his authoritarian and dismissive tone.
Sultan Jr.
‘A lot of the time it doesn’t
make sense to me either. All I know is that every time I try to make a
photograph, you give me the steely-eyed look. You know it: penetrating but
impenetrable, tough and in control. Or you shove your hands in your pockets and
gaze off into some mythical future, which for some reason is about 45 degrees
to my left. It’s like you’re acting the role of the heroic executive in an
annual report, or in a diorama on success. Maybe you’re looking for a public
image of yourself and I’m interested in something more private, in what happens
between events – that brief moment between thoughts when you forget yourself.’
Sultan Snr.
‘That sounds good but I think it’s
a load of crap. If anything, the picture shows how strained and artificial the
situation was that you set up.’
In phantasy, I am suggesting that
early attempts of access to mother are swiftly put down by Sultan Snr. The boy
is humiliated and shamed, not let in, resentment builds and I am suggesting
that the work is a visual representation of these struggles. In Freudian theory
the father will metaphorically castrate the boy as punishment for his attempt
on desires for mother, so these unsuccessful attacks on father will harbour
resentment, he will pick his time more carefully next time. There is a temporary
resolution, in the form of identification with father and his super ego is developed
further, perhaps as a punishing and more critical inner moral authority.
Resentment is repressed until such time the son can mount another attack. These
lost battles with father foster more resentment and his need to kill off his
father and gain access to his mother are again delayed.
The underlying resentment and
wish for revenge in Jr. and the illusion of power within the patriarchal Snr. is
maintained. It finds itself peacefully and subtly embedded into the work,
unnoticed by his parents, perhaps not fully resolved by the boy. Sultans Oedipal
struggle is part-resolved, his strength to repel against parental authority
without identification, is his ultimate goal of his art. This anger towards his
father is now directed at both parents, he has gained a contact with reality
through peaceful means. He has entered the primal scene at last, on his terms, producing
the family photograph he wants to present to the world. He has confronted to a
degree, the relationship between the three of them, resolving a certain amount of
the anxiety.
Here we see a visual
representation of the conflict approaching resolution, a form of figurative
emasculation. Here, photography is used as the therapeutic tool in the resolution
of the Oedipal Dilemma.
Spencer Rowell 2012
