Valley view
Larry Sultan expands the frame with his suburban porn-set shots.

By Glen Helfand

THE VAST SUBURBAN sprawl that's literally behind the infamous Hollywood sign is the place they call the Valley. It's the derided, residential flip side of the showbiz industry capital, stigmatized with a reputation for bad taste and big malls. The flat, sun-baked streets are also the center of an alternative film business, one that caters to adults. There are triple-X studios and reams of glossy VHS and DVD boxes housed in the industrial parks of Chatsworth, not far from quiet neighborhoods and their neon accented-stucco strip malls. Like most film studios, these make use of the locations at hand. Successful companies like Vivid, Wicked, and the like rent nearby residences for film shoots, tapping into their lived-in qualities. After all, sex and pornography in the video age belong in the home, even if the evidence is hidden behind the entertainment unit.

For the past five years, Larry Sultan has been photographing the action in these domestic sets for a series of pictures he calls "The Valley." They are lush, almost romantic color images set in kitchens, living rooms, children's bedrooms, and ordinary backyards. There's something uncommonly revealing about the photographs, which are rooted in the mundane narratives of porn (a tryst with the deliveryman, randy real estate agents, and repressed couples freed of prudishness). Each shows flesh as well as the labors of movie production (booms, lighting equipment, paper towels used to wipe up sticky messes). It's a story of contemporary America as reflected in the work of adult cinema.

This week the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opens "Larry Sultan: The Valley," an exhibition of more than 50 works from the completed series, concurrent with the publication of an extensive Sultan book featuring those images. While the artworks trade on sex, Sultan's project is more of a pertinent social study with the added allure of bare skin. The stylized raunch occurs on the sidelines, seen from a distance, or during in-between moments – when a shot is being composed or during a coffee break. The talent, clothed and naked, is seen lounging on living-room couches, where a suitcase might be carefully placed on a bed covered with a pink chenille throw. In Topanga Skyline Drive #1, a picture from 2000, a naked guy peers out of a kitchen window, leaning over the wood cupboards and tiled sink counter, just to the left of the late-model dishwasher. He stares longingly at the trees outside, with leaves a bleached green that immediately reads California. You'd never guess this guy was an actor of any sort if it weren't for the cables and camera bag in the corner.

Sometimes it's almost impossible to tell where the artifice kicks in. Patio, Delita Drive, another photo from 2000, depicts two naked women lounging beneath a garden awning. The light, diffused by leaves, is warmly Mediterranean, and the women are pensive. The composition evokes an idyllic Manet picnic – with beer-friendly plastic cups.

Other contemporary artists have trod this territory, but Sultan's pictures have more resonance. He grew up in the Valley, in homes just like these makeshift movie sets. Sultan, who has lived for many years in Marin, is interested in locations that have some personal connection to his life. In his influential early-1990s series called "Pictures from Home," he photographed his aging parents in the golf-and-martini glam of their suburban San Fernando life. The sense of color and setting in these works is clearly related to the "Valley" pictures. It's not surprising, since the homes are in the same neighborhoods: Tarzana, Encino, Woodland Hills, Van Nuys, and Sherman Oaks. "That edge-of-the-Valley area is fascinating," he tells me over coffee. "It represents where my parents lived."

We all have issues with family, as well as a layer of idealism attached to memories of it. Childhood homes seem bigger and more opulent in recollection than they did in real life. Sultan writes in the engaging introduction to his book that "when my parents moved to our new house on Dubois Avenue and put in the waterfall, pool, and cinderblock walls, it was as if they transformed the jungle into a resort." Media – and the fantasies porn trades on – can create a similar effect. There's a freeing disconnect between the use of the home as a film set and its use as an actual living space. Lunch, at home or on set, is cold cuts and potato salad, but in the latter setting, someone is apt to be comfortably naked. One of Sultan's points, however, is that it's all a construct, a cinematic fiction. This is a temporary work site, but someone actually lives there. What are they having for dinner?

"The Valley" series started in 1998, after Sultan was hired to illustrate a magazine story on adult filmmakers (he has a growing practice as a fashion and commercial photographer and is included in the New York Museum of Modern Art's current "Fashioning Fiction" show). He was as much intrigued by the subject matter as by the location, which triggered memories. He managed to endear himself to the filmmakers and stars, who allowed him to return repeatedly. Sultan's art stems from his lingering presence on that unsettlingly familiar set. He stays through the many hurry-up-and-wait moments of a film shoot's usual three-day schedule. "By the third day, I'm desperate and bored and fascinated; everything has worn off," he says. "By then, I'm more adventuresome and able to see nuances." He sees tangles of flesh as well as clashing patterns of blankets and rugs. He's a witness to sex acts on nubby couches and near overwrought furniture, dolls on the beds, and a menorah proudly displayed on a bookshelf.

Perhaps some of this peripheral focus emerged from the challenge to make images of the sex industry without falling into the trap of simply being explicit. "Could I make a tender image around the porn industry?" he ponders aloud. Sultan is also quite aware of the political implications of this series and has wisely steered clear of the more exploitative aspects of the business. "The project was never erotic for me," he says. "From the beginning, what intrigued me was how the environments were made interesting."

Sultan took the last pictures in the series in the past few months. The series' culmination, and the show's opening, ironically coincides with the HIV scare that has temporarily shut down the adult film business and generated new government regulation of its production. The same way the recent news deglamorizes the industry, Sultan's art reveals how porn stars and technicians are workers – engaged in a dream factory. At this particular moment, the business is in crisis mode, the carnal fantasies seem just that much less attainable. This development only enhances the power of Sultan's work, which ultimately expresses his take on a national consciousness. "I think of myself as an American artist rooted in the American experience," he says. "And there is no place more American than L.A., a place of dreams and imagination."

'Larry Sultan: The Valley' runs May 8-Aug. 1, Fri.-Tues., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.-9 p.m., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., S.F. $10, $7 seniors, $6 students, free for 12 and under and members (free first Tues.; half price Thurs., 6-9 p.m.). (415) 357-4000.