Larry Sultan (American, 1946–2009) was born in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up in Los Angeles, CA. He studied political science at UC Santa Barbara, and received his MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. He became known in 1977 for Evidence, a highly influential book he made in collaboration with Mike Mandel backed by funding he received from the National Endowment for the Arts. A milestone in the history of conceptual photography, the book was comprised of photographs from industrial and government archives. Mandel explained that through their collaboration, they wanted to show that photography could be “more than just the modernist practice of fine-tuning your style and way of seeing.” In the early 1980s, Sultan began a decade-long project documenting his parents, who were forced into early retirement, in and around their home. The project, Pictures from Home, was both a personal diary as well as a further exploration into the fiction of photography. In the 1990s Sultan began a new project documenting the suburban homes that were rented out as sets for pornographic movies. Like his previous series, The Valley, the series was regarded as being less about its subject matter and more of a commentary on “how photography is used in the construction of that fantasy.”

His work is included in collection at the Guggenheim Museum, The Tate Modern, The Stedelijk, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is the recipient of five NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Tiffany Comfort Award, and a Fleishhacker Fellowship. He was also a Distinguished Professor of Photography and Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts.

Sultan died of cancer at the age of 63.