Larry Sultan at the Metropolitan Museum is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
The Daily Pic: In 1989, Larry Sultan caught his father being a 1950s dad.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 1991; ©Larry Sultan)
“My Father Reading the Newspaper” was taken by Larry Sultan in 1989, and is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in the smart collection show called “Everyday Epiphanies”. Seeing the photo in the flesh, especially, the glowing newspaper gives a lovely sense that Sultan’s photographic paper is itself translucent and letting light through, almost as though his image were mounted in a light box – as though it were representing translucency by being translucent (and then you realize that it isn’t). There’s also something poignant in how the reflection of Sultan Sr. in the window at rear shows him just as remote and invisible as he is in our child’s-eye view from the front, where he seems to be all newspaper, all the time.
For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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