Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, Oranges On Fire, San Francisco, 1976, from the series Billboards

” ‘Oranges on Fire’ ran on the ten Bay Area, Santa Cruz and Syracuse NY billboards supplied by Foster and Kleiser from late August, through September in 1975. With a tape recorder, and posing as newsmen, the artists walked around the billboard locations and interviewed passers-by about the meaning that they made out of their billboards. Some thought it was religious (only god could hold burning oranges?), others thought it was the campaign for a movie or a band. The feedback reinforced their sense that they had reached exactly the space that they wanted to occupy. A spokesman for Foster and Kleiser was reported to say, ‘There’s a message in there, I guess, but we didn’t learn what it was.’ “

—Charlotte Cotton, excerpted from the chapter “Two Guys from Van Nuys,” from the upcoming publication Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel.

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