The Valley is the nickname given to the area of San Fernando in southern California. Rows of identical pastel coloured villas that borderline on kitsch are at the centre of the work of photographer Larry Sultan, a native son.

His images, on show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, play on the ambiguity of a paradoxically reassuring environment especially when the artist takes his camera into a world on the edge of legality, the porn industry, which uses the interiors of ordinary homes as sets for films. L.B.

Until 1.9.2004
Larry Sultan: The Valley
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco
T +1-415-3574000
https://www.sfmoma.org