Pictures from Home: photographer Larry Sultan’s domestic drama arrives on Broadway
Winner of ‘Best Adaptation’ in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards, Pictures from Home at Studio 54 brings the memoir of American photographer Larry Sultan to Broadway, starring Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker
American photographer Larry Sultan, who died in 2009, depicted California-fied suburban family life through staged documentary imagery. For his celebrated 1992 memoir, Pictures from Home, he spent almost a decade photographing the lives of his parents as they journeyed from Brooklyn to California’s San Fernando Valley.
Sultan’s scenes of bright green plush carpets and palm trees, and their accompanying oral histories, have now gone on to inspire a stage adaptation, starring Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker.
Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home
Now on at Studio 54, the Broadway theatre occupying the site of its namesake club, the show features a set by designer Michael Yeargan, and promises to ‘evoke memories of childhood, parenthood and the hard-won wisdom that comes with both’.
‘It’s a memory play. It takes place in a big empty room and then sort of comes to life,’ says Lane, who plays Sultan’s father. Playwright Sharr White adds that reimaginings of Sultan’s interactions with his parents will shine a light on questions around ‘ownership of an image, and who gets to own the family narrative’.
The Broadway production is just one of the many innovative ways in which Sultan’s widow Kelly has been preserving and amplifying his legacy. To date, she has overseen an expanded reprint of the book, and a series of dynamic solo and group shows across Europe, Asia and Oceania, while this year will see the publication of the photographer’s Swimmers series (1978-82), inspired by a Red Cross swimming manual.
‘In all our engagements with Larry’s work, we are instructed by his humour and playfulness, his love of experimentation and pushing boundaries,’ says Kelly. ‘We are exploring new, creative ways to allow the public to engage with Larry’s archive.’
‘Pictures from Home’ runs from 9 February-16 April 2023 at Studio 54, Broadway, New York. larrysultan.com, picturesfromhomebroadway.com
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
An exhibition of the series will be on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York from 23 February - 8 April 2023. yanceyrichardson.com
As Photography Editor at Wallpaper*, Sophie Gladstone commissions across fashion, interiors, architecture, travel, art, entertaining, beauty & grooming, watches & jewellery, transport and technology. Gladstone also writes about and researches contemporary photography. Alongside her creative commissioning process, she continues her art practice as a photographer, for which she was recently nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. And in recognition of her work to date, listed by the British Journal of Photography as ‘One to Watch’.
-
Bringing BRAT to life: we meet the designers behind Charli XCX's victory-lap tour
An exclusive interview with Cour Design's Jonny Kingsbury, the stage and lighting designer behind Charli XCX's new BRAT tour
By Smilian Cibic Published
-
Apple’s new Mac mini is a pocket-sized powerhouse thanks to the M4 processor
With the new Mac mini, Apple has squeezed its M4 and M4 Pro processors into the smallest conceivable footprint, physically and environmentally. Apple insiders tell us how
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
One to Watch: EJM Studio’s stool is inspired by the humble church pew
EJM Studio’s ‘Pew’ stool reimagines the traditional British church seating with a modern, eco-conscious twist
By Smilian Cibic Published
-
Inside Luna Luna: the amusement park designed by artists lands in New York
‘Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy’ – featuring rides by Basquiat, Lichtenstein, Hockney, Haring, and Dalí – has opened at The Shed
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Henni Alftan’s paintings frame everyday moments in cinematic renditions
Concurrent exhibitions in New York and Shanghai celebrate the mesmerising mystery in Henni Alftan’s paintings
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next Door
The Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
By Anne Soward Published
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New York
Violet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
By Mary Cleary Published
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American West
The artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990s
New York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black men
The late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New York
Artist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
By Hannah Silver Published