‘This is one of the most significant American photobooks of the 1990s‘ Parr + Badger Vol. II
Pictures From Home was one of his projects that took a decade, featuring his mother and father as the main subjects. It is a pendant to his parents, and was published in 1992. Over the years from the 1980s to the 1990s, Sultan frequently returned home to Southern California. Being a narrative collage, this photo book holds various mediums. It includes contemporary photographs, film stills from home movies, parts of conversation, and his own writings as well as other mementos. Sultan has created it to leave ambiguity in understanding the difference between the documentary and the staged.
I like the way that Sultan has collected memorabilia from archives, similar to my project, and linked the two so they become one. I want to include a small level of this in my work, however I still want to present the difference. I am influenced by his ability to capture his parents doing daily tasks in the moment, but still managing to make it look staged. I find there is a sort of environmental photography linked with this, presenting the subjects in their environment and having them look at the camera. I feel like I have done this in my work, however it could be improved by placing my gran in situations where she is completing an activity or daily task.
As a result of looking into Sultan’s work I have been inspired to photograph my gran looking at archives and old objects with sentimental meaning of my grandfather. My gran tends to enjoy revisiting old memories through photo books so I will photograph her doing so.
I have also been inspired by the way he lays out his archived images in Pictures From Home. These page has particularly inspired me to experiment with a layout like this.
The pages including his writing and memorabilia has given me ideas on how to include my grandfathers scrap books, possibly rewriting the news paper articles or enlarging the images and reorganising it to fit a page in Photoshop. I will experiment with this later.
