CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/8/2024

‘Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel: Evidence’ is back in print at last!

Spreads from Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s seminal 1977 conceptual photography book, Evidence—out now from D.A.P. in a new, unjacketed hardcover edition printed from gorgeous new scans, many of which are from the original negatives. Collecting 59 perplexingly deadpan black and white documentary photographs from a variety of government agencies, educational institutions and corporations, the original book was an uncaptioned, effortlessly fascinating cypher. Here, it returns to its most original form. “One major and especially pertinent figure for them, but for Mandel in particular, was Chris Burden,” Sandra S. Phillips writes. “Although probably not obvious, since its intent is poetic rather than specifically political, Evidence has a consistent theme and a kind of narrative. The work in the book is a sort of funny referendum on the new technology, burgeoning close by in the incipient Silicon Valley. Sensitive to the desensitizing implications of a technology gone out of control, Sultan and particularly Mandel found Burden’s work especially relevant. Burden was, for the most part, a performance artist, but his pieces emphasized the realness of the artist, the importance of the gesture of the individual, and the role and value of the creative, humane, and whimsical personality, and they illustrate how slight but heroic the mere body can be.”