PHILIP GEFTER:  TRIBUTE TO LARRY SULTAN

Larry Sultan was one of my closest friends. Some years ago he gave mean artist’s proof of “Sharon Wild, 2001,” from his series, The Valley, inwhich he documented pornographic film production in suburban homesrented out to porn industry producers in the San Fernando Valley, wherehe grew up. Narratives mount in his pictures of porn actors feigningdesire for the camera as he pulls back the curtain on the charade. Thedeeper complexity of this work, though, comes from his depiction of thelayers of fabrication in the act of image-making itself.

“Sharon Wild” is handsomely framed and looms large on the wallabove the dining table in my apartment. At night I like to sit in myEames chair, sip a martini before dinner, and get lost in my consciousnessstream. As I think about everything and nothing, my eyes will invariablysettle on Sharon Wild across the room. I sit there staring at her and shesits at the edge of the bed staring right back at me. She is a classical figurewith beautiful proportions and a porcelain cast to her skin from the light.I tend to think of her as Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty,wearing a pair of glass Cinderella fuck-me pumps. Or, perhaps, KimNovak, the Hitchcock blond, gone bad.

I can imagine Larry standing in the doorway of that suburban bedroomin the San Fernando Valley, the resonance of his own parents’ bedroommaking him feel like a sixteen year old all over again. Knowinghim as I did, he would have riffed on that feeling, relishing the idea of aleggy blond sitting at the edge of his parents’ bed. The thrill and thesense of intimidation he would have felt looking at her, anticipating thekind of masturbatory fantasy he would not have had the experience toconjure up as a teenager. I suspect that Larry, the adult photographer inthat doorway, also imagined the scene as a roadside motel room somewhereoutside Vegas, say, the atmosphere crackling with sexual tensionand emotional innuendo and a variety of other narrative possibilities thatdrew immediate reference from the films of his youth even as he stoodthere reading the social implications of the scene in obligatory postmodernterms.

Still, what gets me about the picture is the way Sharon sits at the edgeof the bed in her skimpiest bra and panties. She looks at the camera tentatively and with vulnerability, her arms folded across her breasts elegantly,but more to the point, self-protectively. I knew Larry well enough tounderstand the sixth sense he had about friends and strangers, alike, withwhich he could read their emotional frequency regardless of what theywere presenting. He also had the courage and the willingness to meetthem where he sensed them to be emotionally. That’s why the balance ofpretext and subtext is a tension that animates a Larry Sultan photograph.

In the case of Sharon, Larry was able to see beyond the hard bittenporn actress armor to what she may have been feeling as she sat therebetween takes, more exposed in the intimacy of the quiet moment infront of a stranger’s camera than when she was performing sex actsbefore the cast and crew. And he photographed her with tenderness,leaving her dignity intact even as he adjusted the placement of the suitcaseand the drape of the sheet strewn across the ratty mattress and heturned on the lamp, all to underscore the seamy quality of the genericbedroom.

Larry died on December 13, 2009. One night during the last week ofhis life, I sat at my dining table and looked up at Sharon, who has beenhanging on that wall for almost nine years. Suddenly, I saw something inthe picture I had never seen before–an amorphous white cloud at thebase of the lamp on the night table behind her. It wasn’t an object, but,rather, a ghostly little mass of white light. Now, I have never been predisposed to metaphysical or paranormal thinking, but, at that moment, Icouldn’t help wondering if it might be Larry’s spirit appearing in the pictureon the wall of my apartment in New York to say hello to me, andgoodbye, as he lay in bed at his home in California, slowly passing fromthis life to the unknown.

I got up and pulled my copy of the The Valley off the bookshelf. Ilooked at the picture of Sharon on the cover, and there it was, the littleamorphous white cloud on the night table behind her that I had neverseen before. I was relieved, if not just a little disappointed, and myamusement about my own magical thinking prompted me to send a textto Larry’s wife, Kelly, asking if she would give him a kiss for me. Fiveminutes later the phone rang and it was Larry. His voice was weak buthe greeted me as if it were just another day and asked me what I wasdoing. I told him about my discovery in the picture of Sharon and myfantasy about his spirit paying me a visit. He laughed and said, “That’sexactly how I feel, like a little white cloud on Sharon Wild’s night table.”Now, every time I look at Sharon, my eye goes immediately to the littlewhite cloud to see if it is still there.