The Valley

June 09, 2004

Stop by the SFMoma before August 1st to enjoy Larry Sultan's exhibit The Valley.

Bay Area photographer Larry Sultan’s The Valley series focuses on the San Fernando Valley, where he grew up, and addresses the use of ordinary homes as sets for pornographic films. In Sultan’s large-scale color photographs, mundane objects — a roll of paper towels, a stack of dirty dishes — take on new weight, and suburban life becomes a symbolically charged backdrop. The project investigates the meaning of home and asks why the ideal of middle-class domesticity lends itself to this most curious form of cultural appropriation.