Water Over Thunder: Selected Writings

Larry Sultan was one of the most important and celebrated photographers of the twentieth century, but his lifelong commitment to writing is less well known. Water Over Thunder is the first publication devoted to Sultan’s wide-ranging use of writing as a personal, artistic, and pedagogic tool. The selected texts – many unpublished until now – come from Sultan’s numerous journals and notebooks, encompassing reflections on his teaching and art practice, drafts for short stories, vivid dream diaries, and polished essays. Interspersed throughout are extracts from Sultan’s eloquent public lectures and interviews, illuminating the questions he investigated throughout his life and emphasizing the thematic underpinnings of his best known series: Pictures from Home, Evidence (with Mike Mandel), and The Valley. Throughout these various writings, water appears as an important literal and metaphorical force. The book’s title is derived from an early draft of Pictures from Home in which Sultan writes about the process of beginning a new artistic project: ‘Everything is in motion, spinning off of surfaces and slamming against shadowy forms ... it seems impossible to find a break in the surface.’  

This volume is illustrated throughout with previously unseen materials from Sultan’s archive: marked contact sheets, outtakes, scouting shots, selections from his found photo collection, and layout pages from his book maquettes. As a whole, Water Over Thunder illuminates Sultan’s extraordinary way of working and forms an intimate portrait of an artist thinking through his craft and the world around him in real time.