Water Over Thunder: Selected Writings by Larry Sultan

Celebrated for his photography, Larry Sultan also maintained a lifelong writing practice—private, wide-ranging, and deeply connected to the way he taught and made work. Water Over Thunder is the first book to focus on that writing. It gathers selected texts (many unpublished until now) from his journals and notebooks: reflections on teaching and studio practice, drafts for short stories, dream diaries, and finished essays.

Interwoven excerpts from lectures and interviews illuminate the questions Sultan returned to across his career and point to the thematic foundations of his best-known series, including Pictures from Home, Evidence (with Mike Mandel), and The Valley. Water recurs throughout as both a literal presence and a metaphor. The title comes from an early draft of Pictures from Home, where Sultan describes the uncertainty of beginning a new project: “Everything is in motion, spinning off of surfaces and slamming against shadowy forms … it seems impossible to find a break in the surface.”

Illustrated with previously unseen material from Sultan’s archive—marked contact sheets, outtakes, scouting photographs, found images, and layout pages from book maquettes—the volume offers an intimate view of an artist thinking on the page, in the classroom, and in the studio.