Sally Mann

Sally Mann

Sally Mann is an American photographer who is best known for her large black and white photographs. She started with photographs of her children at first, but later photographed landscapes suggesting death and decay.

Sally Mann

 Born in Lexington, Virginia on May 1, 1951 as Sally Turner Munger, Mann was the third of 3 children and the only daughter. Her father, Robert S. Munger, was a general practitioner. Her mother, Elizabeth Evans Munger, ran the bookstore at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. She took up photography at The Putney School where she graduated in 1969. Her reason for taking up photography was simply to be alone with her boyfriend in the darkroom. She made her debut at Putney with an image of a nude classmate. Her father encouraged her interest in photography and his 5x7 camera became the basis of her use of large format cameras today.

After graduating, Mann worked as a photographer at Washington and Lee University where in the mid 1970's she photographed the construction of its new law school building, the Lewis Hall. This lead to her first one-woman exhibition in 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The images were included in her first book, Second Sight, which was published in 1984. She published a second collection, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, in 1988. This publication stimulated controversy. The images showed the confusing emotions and developing identities adolescent girls. The way it was printed made for a very dramatic and brooding mood in all her images.

Mann, however, is probably best known for her third collection which was published in 1992. Immediate Family consisted of 65 black and white photographs of her three children, all under the age of 10. The photographs showed typical children's activities, such as dressing up, napping, playing board games. Because many of the photographs were taken at the family's remote summer cabin along the river, where the children played and swam in the nude, there were also images of skinny dipping. Others explored darker themes, such as insecurity, sexuality and death. When the collection was released, the controversy was intense. There were even accusations of child pornography. One image of her 4 year old daughter (Virginia at 4) was even censored by the Wall Street Journal with black bars over her eyes, nipples and pubic area. Mann considered these photographs to be "natural through the eyes of a mother, since she has seen her children in every state: happy, sad, playful, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked.". Critics agreed and Time magazine even named her 'America's Best Photographer' in 2001, saying amongst other things: "No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care.". The New Republic considered it "one of the great photograph books of our time.".

In the mid 1990's, Mann began photographing landscapes. She used wet plate collodion 8x10 glass negatives and again used the same 100 year old 8x10 bellows view camera she had used for all her previous work. They were first seen in Still Time. Mann has published several more books, most of which consist of landscapes.

Currently, Mann is working on a series of self-portraits, a multipart study of the legacy of slavery in Virginia, and intimate images of her family and life. The latter, entitled "Marital Trust", spans 30 years and includes intimate details of her family life with her husband Larry Mann.

Emmit's Bloody Nose

Personally, looking her photographs including the ones of her little daughter in the nude, I can understand the controversy. However, being a father myself, I would have to agree with Sally Mann. Some of the photographs are beautiful and they capture her children exactly how a mother or a father would look look at their children. The problem is publishing them I think. Not everyone will agree it's right for images like this to be shown in public. Then, there are the darker themes that make for quite uncomfortable viewing in my opinion. Children lying down, almost as corpses. Or a toddler with a cigarette. However, looking at the photographs from a photographer's perspective I can definitely see the artistic and photogenic value. Still, overall, Mann is  a photographer with vision and a style to admire.



Image Sources:
http://jedispaz3.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/sally-mann/
http://phlearn.com/photographers/sally-mann
http://www.milkandbreadvintage.com/2011/10/sally-mann-photography.html