The Family Portrait That Set Larry Sultan's Auction Record

Larry Sultan, My Mother Posing for Me, from the series Pictures of Home, 1984 (2016) sold for $69,300 at Christie's in New York on October 2, 2024.

The archival pigment print, flush-mounted on board work, had been traded twice in the past. It is number four from an edition of 10. Signed, titled, dated, with print date and numbered 4 / 10 in ink by Kelly Sultan, executor, in ink and Estate of Larry Sultan stamp on an accompanying label.

In 1992, Sultan’s Pictures from Home was published to critical acclaim and this portait of his mother and father in the suburban Southern Californina home became a defining image of a series that he hoped would "puncture this mythology of the family and to show what happens when we are driven by images of success”.

The sale beat Sultan's previous auction record by $21,200, a 44% rise. His previous record was set by Boxers Mission Hills (1999), which sold for $48,100 at Phillips de Pury on November 20, 2007.