Swimmers

‘I wanted to do something so absolutely different, and physical, and in a certain way, kind of ill-conceived… I took my camera and went underwater in a bunch of pools. And made pictures.’
Between 1978 and 1982, in a departure from the collaborative con- ceptual work that he had become known for, Larry Sultan photo-graphed people learning to swim in public pools in San Francisco. Initially inspired by black-and-white documentary photograhs he found in a Red Cross swimming manual, Sultan soon ...