Larry Sultan. Image from larrysultan.com
Desperate housewives, white picket fences, apple pie and fridge-freezer combos might spring to mind when thinking about suburbia. Or for those of us who actually grew up in the ‘burbs, maybe it’d be more along the lines of non-existent public transport, being “too far out” for friends to visit, a lack of cool bars and absolutely nothing in terms of shopping.
Focusing their lenses past the perfectly manicured gardens of matching terraced houses and uncovering the secrets behind those colour coded front doors, here are five photographers making the suburbs look so interesting that your city centre friends might think twice before declining that next invitation.
Larry Sultan. Image from larrysultan.com
Larry Sultan
A product of the urbanised San Fernando Valley, California, Larry Sultan’s work is very much inspired by his suburban upbringing. Intending to deconstruct the stereotyped expectations he grew up with concerning the institution of the American family, the photographer’s first major work entitled “Pictures from Home” concentrates on his own parents and aims to “puncture this mythology of the family and to show what happens when we are driven by images of success.” Using the same setting for “The Valley”, Sultan further questions the idea of home and the family. By humorously photographing the middle class houses used for shooting pornographic films, Sultan once again illustrates his opinion surrounding the suburban house and concept of desire, and also points out that not everything in such neighbourhoods is really as it seems.
Richard Billingham. Image from americansuburbx.com
Richard Billingham
Richard Billingham grew up on the seventh floor of a council block in the Black Country, England, and like Larry Sultan, photographed his parents. Chronicling an upbringing tarred by his father Ray’s alcoholism, his mother Liz’s obsession with hoarding and the poverty the family were forced into as a result of the pair’s incompetence, “Ray’s a Laugh” is a raw depiction of a chaotic suburban life that couldn’t be further from Sultan’s aesthetic. Images shot on the cheapest of film using a harsh flash are marked with various scratches and smudges, adding to the feeling of commotion in the already tumultuous series, taken by a young man using his camera simply to “make order out of the chaos.”
William Eggleston. Image from erickimphotography.com
William Eggleston
Fascinated with regular inhabitants and the average environments in which they dwell, William Eggleston’s images focus on the development of the suburban landscape between his hometown of Memphis and Mississippi. Finding beauty in the mundane, Eggleston captures simple moments – emphasising their importance through framing, use of angles and, of course, a saturated hue. Although now considered the pioneer of colour photography, Eggleston’s work was not always so widely celebrated, with the photographer’s debut presentation of “William Eggleston’s Guide” meeting serious criticism. The New York Times named it the “most hated show of the year”, irked by the photographer’s use of colour film – a medium that was unheard of at the time – and the same publication also stated the work as “a case, if not of the blind leading the blind, at least the banal leading the banal”, unable to appreciate Eggleston’s uncomplicated presentation of American life.
Martin Parr. Image from hungertv.com
Martin Parr
Whether he is documenting the lives of the working class in Merseyside, photographing the affluent shoppers of Manchester or recording the daily lives of those in rural Ireland, Martin Parr’s particular interest lies within society. The way in which people live and present themselves, specifically, is what attracts Parr to his subjects – his anthropological approach generally resulting in quirky and satirical depictions of modern life. Although often comical, the photographer describes his work as “serious photographs disguised as entertainment”, and urges his audience to look more intently to decipher a message of more than humour. As with Eggleston, Parr also shoots predominantly in colour, and favours a macro lens to zoom in close to his subjects and put them “under the microscope” in their own environment.
Doug DuBois. Image from medium.com
Doug DuBois
What began as a month-long residency on the southwest of Ireland ended up becoming a five-year long project for American photographer Doug DuBois. There, he worked at documenting a particular group of youths from the Russell Heights council estate just outside of County Cork. Fascinated by the close-knit neighbourhood he encountered there – where “everyone seems to be someone’s cousin, former girlfriend, or spouse” – DuBois captured scenes of adolescents transcending into adulthood for his series “My Last Day at Seventeen”. Over the course of the project, he experienced and photographed the birth of babies, the breakdown of relationships and the formation of new ones within this insular community, and although his predominant theme concerns the uncertainties of teenagers growing up in Ireland today, the series also stresses the importance of community in small country towns.