Like Jeff Burton’s recent book The
Other Place (reviewed
in Metapsychology 9:31), Larry Sultan’s The Valley shows porn
actors at work.  Sultan’s approach is more documentary than Burton’s: he
explains his project in his introduction, and nearly all the pictures are
crisply in focus.  He went around the San Fernando Valley into different
private houses which the owners rented out for the making of porn videos.  He
shows these residential homes populated by unusual goings-on, and his initial
images emphasize the artificiality of it all.  The first picture shows a house
exterior, and it takes a second look to notice that it is an image projected on
a screen inside the house: you can see the floor in front of the screen and
some furniture behind it.  The second picture is taken from a nearby hill, and
in the center of the image shows a single-level home nestled in the valley,
with a white picket fence bordering the garden.  It almost looks like a model,
and in the third picture, we actually see an architectural model of a home,
with a toy car outside and fake trees and shrubbery arranged around the large
house.  The fifth picture shows an interior, with dark-wood old-fashioned
ornately decorated furniture.  Yet obviously the furniture is nearly band new:
the middle piece houses a large TV and has stereo equipment below.  On the left
hand side, there is a glimpse of a naked woman kneeling down bending forward,
but we can only see her hips and her lower limbs.  By almost ignoring the naked
woman, the picture shows her nakedness is almost irrelevant, and the focus is
more on the pretentiousness of the home furnishing.  Bad taste in decorating is
a theme in many of the images: another shows a naked woman in tights putting on
a bra, staring distractedly at something out of frame, while another woman
leans forward, looking like she is putting on a shoe.  Carefully in frame is a
tacky painting on the wall, showing a stagecoach and horses going through the mountains,
and behind the woman is an indoor fireplace set in an ugly wall composed of
fake large stones.  The picture is composed of close colors: cream, browns,
pinks, reds, and brass, but far from being warm, it feels cold and tense.  The
two women are not looking at each other, and their poses are awkward. 

Indeed, in very few of the
photographs do people look at each other: sometimes they are all looking at
something out of the picture, or they just seem to be entirely separate from
each other.  They give the sense of a terrible lack of connection.  Quite often
Sultan will block the central pornographic action from the viewer with an
object such as a vase full of flowers, a bush in the garden, or some other
obstacle.  Maybe he wants to avoid his own work itself being pornographic, and
he succeeds in this.  At the same time, this avoidance of the central subject
conveys a distaste for the porn itself.  He captures the actors in moments when
they are relaxing or when they are bored, sitting around between scenes.  He
sometimes shows the crew doing their jobs, looking very unexcited.  Or
sometimes he just takes pictures of interesting objects in people’s houses: a
surfboard, a drum kit, or even the play light on a staircase, as if he finds
those more interesting than the sex being filmed elsewhere in the house.  While
The Valley is by no means anti-porn, it is far from enthusiastic about
the enterprise.  The main feelings it conveys are boredom, incongruity, and
emptiness. 

There are some moments of warmth among
these images.  In "Backyard, Laurel Canyon, 2003," she shows a man
and a woman sitting on a box leaning toward each other, having some kind of
intimate conversation.  He lightly touches her on the knee with an index
finger, and that suggests much more connection between the two people than any
of the images of people having sex.  In another picture, "Chandler
Boulevard, 2000," a large-busted blond woman sits on a plastic couch,
wearing some kind of shiny blue top and clinging pants.  She is looking at someone
else out of the picture, and looks quite relaxed, with a big smile on her
face.  Looking carefully at the picture, you notice she has her hands down her
pants and she is touching herself, but she seems entirely comfortable.  In
"Patio, Bosque Drive, 2003," a nude woman sits in a plastic white
chair in a garden.  She is leaning back, a little slouched, with a towel on her
lap and a cup resting at an angle in her left hand.  Her right hand hangs in
mid-air, the back of it touching the side of her face.  Her large breasts with
huge round nipples lie on her torso.  She stares right into the camera, looking
extremely contented and a little contemplative.  It seems like a friendly
peaceful moment between her and Sultan. 

So The Valley is a striking
book that provides more subtle commentary on the porn industry than Burton’s The
Other Place or Timothy Greenfield-Sanders in XXX. 
The images are powerful, especially when viewed in the context of the whole
work.  Larry Sultan has taken on a difficult subject skillfully, and this
collection repays careful and repeated viewing. 

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of
the Arts & Humanities Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at
Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online
Review.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine,
psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography, Sexuality