Half a century later, Evidence has become canon without losing any of its charge. The questions it poses of photography’s role as a tool of propaganda to uphold systems of power feels all too timely in our brave new world.
Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, native Los Angelenos who first met as graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1973, had built a collaborative practice that combined the subversive spirit of the Pictures Generation with DIY spirit of punk, casually upending entrenched hierarchies of Western cultural hegemony.
“Larry and I weren’t part of the San Francisco tradition that includes the Beat generation, and that’s one of the reasons we found each other,” says Mandel. “We were of an enlightened cynicism standpoint, instead of the romantic appreciation of history.” They were drawn to a new wave of photobooks like American Snapshot, Champion Pig, and Wisconsin Death Trip that centred personal and community photographic histories. Mandel and Sultan wanted to participate and recognised the moment they were in: the emergence of a West Coast citadel of neoliberalism.
“There were all these organisations looking to build the future through applied technology located in California: Lockheed Aircraft, Northrop Aircraft, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Stanford Research Institute. We saw ourselves within the context of how photography was developing,” says Mandel.
