The valley has been on Sultans mind for a long time. He started with the 1983 series “Pictures from Home” (below a photo of his mom and dad from the series), a very personal documentation of life in the valley that the artist himself calls a “weird place”.

My Mother Posting for Me, from series Pictures from Home, 1984 © Larry Sultan

Somehow, the “weirdness” of it all hasn’t let go of him and so he started the porn series about six years ago, even though “I was surprised that I would do something about sex” as he admits. And the pictures are proof that it wasn’t in any way a voyeuristic streak that brought him close to a 100 times down from his home in San Francisco to these sets.

There are seldom any sex acts documented and it seems Sultan is much more interested in the strange yet fascinating combination of these environments and the temporary guests that inhabit them. “I haven’t found much narratives that touch me as much as this coupling of pleasure and mystery” Sultan explains.

Backyard, Laurel Canyon, from series The Valley, 2003 © Larry Sultan

But what about his relationship with the people in this industry, where everyone is considered a porn STAR? In the picture the people seldom come across as stars, they often show a vulnerability or casualness in a way we are not used to see them – considering that they are often nude or half naked. “Well, it leaves a rich area for interpretation” the artist reflects – “it is a very close knit community, almost like a circus family. The more I was on these sets, the more I felt a deep sense of generosity. The assistants of the film they were shooting were helping me with lighting a scene or producers would point out a setting that could be interesting for my work.” And don’t think getting the vulnerability of the protagonists on film was an easy task. “These actors are used to do “pretty girls” shoots, where posing is key. To understand that I didn’t wanted glamorized shots of them took a big getting used to” explains Larry Sultan.

Woman in Garden, Mission Hills, from series The Valley, 1999 © Larry Sultan

Sultan, who sometimes moonlights as a commercial photographer (he did the Kate Spade campaign that is currently shown at the “fashioning fiction” exhibition at the MoMA), has a great sense of composition, a true knack for colors and as you can see in his photographs again and again – a great sense of humor without being corny. Considering the subject, not an easy thing to acomplish. His “The Valley” series and the new book will definitely put him on the map next to the true visual storytellers such as Jeff Wall, Joel Sternfeld or Philip Lorca diCorcia. And it seems that he finally put the demons of his youth in Van Nuys behind him.