Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel — Sultan & Mandel (DAP / Walther König)

This large-format monograph is the definitive survey of Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s decades-long collaboration — a pivotal partnership in conceptual photography. Designed with visual punch and printed in Germany, the book compiles their most influential works, including Evidence (1977), Billboards, and other lesser-known experiments that collapse the boundaries between art, media, and documentary.

The cover — a pop-anthropological illustration of oranges on fire — signals their signature blend of California surrealism and institutional critique. Inside, Sultan and Mandel extract strangeness from the banal: corporate archives, government documents, and suburban iconography are decontextualised and reassembled with wit and formal elegance. Long before “appropriation” became canon, they were mining the margins of mass visual culture with a rigorous, mischievous intelligence.

This volume holds its place in the Darwin archive as a conceptual counterweight to more emotionally-driven practices. Where Sultan’s Pictures from Home leans into intimacy, this book with Mandel pulls away, asking: what are the politics of looking, editing, and display? For anyone interested in the roots of postmodern photography, artist books, and the aesthetics of institutional critique, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel is foundational.

Technical Sheet

Title: Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel
Artist / Author: Larry Sultan, Mike Mandel
Date: Unstated (likely ca. 2012–2014)
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Hardcover with illustrated dust jacket
Dimensions (cm): approx. 30 x 30 cm
Language: English
Pages: Unstated
Publisher / Editor: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König / D.A.P.
ISBN: 9781935202820
Condition: NEW