Larry Sultan, The Valley

New photobook at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Larry Sultan / The Valley

Published by Scalo

Since 1988, Larry Sultan has returned time and again to photograph on porn sets in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley--the Silicon(e) Valley of the porn industry. But The Valley is by no means a documentary on porn filmmaking. Rather, it is a dense series of pictures of middle-class homes invaded by the porn industry.
Sultan's lens focuses on pedestrian details--a piece of half-eaten pie, dirty linens in a heap, "actors" taking a break--that offer clues to a bizarre other-world. The lush and intricate images adroitly play with artifice and reality, adding up to rich, elliptical narratives that circle around the concepts of "home" and "desire." These images of homes and gardens, porn actors and film crews, studio and location shootings are an ambiguous meditation on suburbia and its trappings, family and transgression, loss and desire, the utopias and dystopias of middle-class lifestyle.
The Valley and its many-layered photographs outline the complexity of domestic life at the beginning of the 21st century, opening up new perspectives for photography through its innovative combination of staged and documentary photographs.

In 1998, an English magazine asked me to go on a porn set. I flew down to Burbank Airport with my wife, and we went to the house they'd given me the address of. It was a dentist's house on Van Alden. That name had all kinds of connotations when I was in high school. Because the Valley is so haunted for me by the ghosts of childhood, all of these street names have Proustian connotations. All I have to do is to say: Havenhurst, Van Alden, Vineta, Dubois, and a flood of associations comes back to me. [...] After the first five minutes of the strangeness of it all, I started to look around, going to the bedrooms, wandering through the house. It felt like a permission to go into a house in L.A. and to imagine how someone would live their life in this house. I made the pictures for the magazine. I left and thought, "This is it, this is what I have to do." --Larry Sultan

Complete list of photobooks at the NOPW library.

Alec Soth, From Here to There: Alec Soth's America

New photobook at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Alec Soth / From Here to There: Alec Soth's America

Published by The Walker Art Center

From Here to There: Alec Soth's America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist's photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist's working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer's "Riverrun"--a meditation on Soth's series Sleeping by the Mississippi--and August Kleinzahler's poem "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist's book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America's suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan.

Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogota (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos.

Complete list of photobooks at the NOPW library.

A Beginner's Workshop on Photo Book Publishing, with Melanie McWhorter | December 12-13 2011

Upcoming workshop at The New Orleans Photography Workshops

A Beginner's Workshop on Photo Book Publishing, with Melanie McWhorter

This two-day workshop covers the evolution of a photography book from its inception as an idea, to a finished product. Intended for photographers with little or no experience in publishing, A Beginner's Workshop on Photo Book Publishing is an interactive, dynamic workshop that enables participants to fine tune their ideas and become familiar with design, layout and essential publishing processes. When completed, participants will be able to make decisions about publishing their work and envision all of the steps involved in producing their project from start to finish.

The workshop begins by familiarizing with basic book design elements and book publishing vocabulary, and expands into topics including making a basic budget and conceiving ideas for fundraising, branding and marketing to your audience, contacting publishers or printers, knowing the roles and jobs involved in publishing your photobook and deciding whether to work with a publisher or self-publish, and then, traditionally or with print-on-demand.

Melanie covers the basic components of financing, as well as the essentials of distribution ranging from such easily overlooked matters as storage, to the finer points of what is required to get the book on to the dealers' shelves. This workshop is the perfect publishing overview for photographers of all levels.

Placed immediately following the 2011 PhotoNOLA portfolio review week end, the timing of this workshop is designed for photographers also interested in attending the many events and exhibitions that take place during New Orleans' annual celebration of photography.

Tuition: $395 | Materials fee: $25

Melanie McWhorter has been the manager of the photo-eye's Book Division for over 10 years and curates exhibitions of local photographers in photo-eye Bookstore. She is a regular contributor to the online magazines Fraction Magazine and photo-eye maintains her own photo-related blog, melaniephotoblog.com and is co-founder of Finite Foto which focuses on photography in New Mexico.

Melanie has been interviewed about photography in numerous print and online publications including PDN, The Picture Show, Santa Fe's THE magazine; has judged the prestigious photography competitions Women Photojournalists of Washington's Annual Exhibition and Fotografia: Fotofestival di Roma's Book Prize; and has reviewed portfolios at Fotografia, Photolucida, Review Santa Fe and PhotoNOLA.

Recently her own photography was exhibited in Sweet Escape at Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, FL; Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe and in Fraction Magazine. She resides with her family in Santa Fe, NM.

Complete information at neworleansworkshops.com/artists/melanie