Dad Practicing Golf Swing, from the series Pictures from Home,

1989

How does a photographer maintain the critical distance necessary for a documentary project when he or she is emotionally invested in the subject matter? From 1983 to 1991, Sultan captured his aging mother and father at their retirement community in Palm Springs, from casual snapshots of banal daily routines to more purposefully arranged compositions. In Dad Practicing Golf Swing, the comfortable middle-class success achieved by Sultan’s father is revealed through such details as the color television, his golf hobby, and even his gold watch. Published in 1992 as Pictures of Home, the project combined photographs like this one with Sultan’s personal writings, family snapshots, home movie stills, and interviews with his parents. Pictures of Home exploits the photographer’s domestic reality to fracture the idealized values of the white, middle-class American family during the 1980s.