Sally mann and other photographers. Sally Mann, Proud Flesh. Black and White Worlds by Sally Mann

May 1, 1951 was born a talented American photographer Sally Mann (Sally Mann)

Sometimes I feel like my only childhood memories are the ones I made up while looking at pictures of myself. Sally Mann

Sally Mann (Sally Mann, in some Russian-language publications she is called Sally Mann) was born on May 1, 1951 in Lexington, Virginia. She received her secondary education at the famous Putney School, known among other things for its artistic traditions and in-depth study of the fine arts. It was there that the girl became addicted to photography, however, for motives very far from love for art. At that time, Sally developed an interest in the opposite sex, and where better to meet boys than in a dark and mysterious darkroom? By the way, among her first photographic experiences were photographs of naked classmates.

An important role in the girl's life, in shaping her worldview, was played by her father, physician Robert C. Munger, who, according to his daughter, looked like a rural doctor from a photo essay by Eugene Smith. It was he who helped Sally realize the truth from Gone with the Wind: "Reputation is something that people of character can live without." He also influenced her artistic taste: “Other families had a nativity scene at Christmas, but my father put other decorations in the living room - for example, a snag in the shape of a penis,” she recalled, “He created eccentric “masterpieces” from anything “For example, the little snake that adorned the center of the dining table was nothing more than dog feces.” The girl adopted a lot from her father: “Outside, Sally looks like me, but inside she is a daddy’s daughter,” her mother claimed.

It is clear that such a parent could not be embarrassed by his daughter's experiments with nudity, he strongly encouraged her studies; in particular, her love for large format began with his camera with 5 by 7 inch negatives. But even this format seemed too small for her: she soon began to photograph on glass plates measuring 8 by 10 inches and using the wet collodion process, invented exactly a hundred years before her birth and already almost forgotten.

In 1969, Sally received a high school diploma, in 1974 she added a bachelor's degree to it, and a year later she became a master of fine arts in the specialty "Writing" ("Creative writing"). However, she did not become a writer, immediately after graduating from college she got a job as a photographer at the University of Washington and Lee (Washington and Lee University).

Until the early 1990s, Sally Mann's career was not very fast. In 1977 she had her first solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC. In 1984, the photo album "Clairvoyance" ("Second Sight") was published. Both of these events passed almost unnoticed. Four years later, she released the album At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988), dedicated to girls "of transitional age, one foot in childhood, the other in the adult world." The book received favorable reviews from critics, but the name of Sally Mann remained practically unknown to the general public.

Sally's third photo album Immediate Family (1992) featured her son and two daughters, who were between 7 and 13 years old when the book was published. This relatively small book - only 65 black and white photographs - instantly lifted her to the photographic Olympus. And as often happens, the main reason for such a quick success was not the author's talent, but the scandal accompanying the book: the fact is that, according to a number of critics, the poses of children in some photographs were "blatantly erotic." Representatives of various committees such as Child Protection went even further, declaring the photographs to be "veiled child pornography."

In fairness, it should be noted that not only "stupid American critics" (this definition came across to me in several Russian-language articles) attacked the poor photographer. Respectable housewives - in calls to talk shows, in letters to newspapers and to forums on the Internet - showed themselves to be even more severe fighters for morality. And this is typical not only for conservative America - I easily found a dozen multi-page discussions of Sally Mann's photos on Russian-language forums and I am sure that this is happening in other languages.

“These are innocent childish poses. If you see eroticism in them, then this is a problem of your perception, incorrect adult interpretations, ”her supporters repeat after Sally Mann. “And if you were in her place, would you expose your children, like this, naked, to show off to the whole world?” Their opponents ask. And no one answers anyone. And what's your answer? The poses are indeed childish and innocent - but the book is intended for adults who have "misinterpretations" as well. And a normal layman will never agree to the publication of photographs of their naked children in the media - only after all, Sally Mann is an artist (even with the prefix "photo"), and not at all the average American housewife.

Speaking of photographers. Children's eroticism was never considered taboo among the latter - back in the 19th century, the famous English writer and part-time photographer Lewis Carroll made a number of beautiful photographs of naked girls, which allowed 20th-century researchers to accuse him of pedophilism with might and main. Today, the world community would condemn the photographs of the sons of one of the most famous photographers of all time, Imogen Cunningham, and she did not even suspect that she was doing something reprehensible. The German photographer Wilhelm Plushow was persecuted in Italy in the 1910s (though not for photographs, but for child molestation), while his colleague and compatriot Wilhelm von Gloeden, who had the same vices, lived honorably in Sicily. There is a legend that the English King Edward VII took his photographs to the UK as diplomatic luggage!

This is not a complete list of recognized - and talented - photographers who could be accused of pedophilia, child pornography, and who knows what other sins. But they were “lucky” to create at a time when it was possible to go to jail for homosexuality, and with children (especially with their own) they could do anything. In the last decade of the 20th century, the situation changed dramatically: death prevented Robert Mapplethorpe from being accused of producing child pornography, but on April 7, 1990, the director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center in Ohio, which hosted an exhibition of the deceased, was arrested. And even though the court later acquitted him, the supporters of freedom of creativity had one less illusion. On April 25 of the same year, San Francisco cops, accompanied by FBI agents, broke into the studio of Jock Sturges, known for his photographs of teenagers on nude beaches.

The art community in the United States and Europe came to the defense of their brethren and, thanks in large part to this support, the court did not bring any charges against Sturges. As for the "non-artistic community", opinions were divided here, although it must be admitted that rallies under the slogan "Stop Pornography" took place more often.

I dwell on these details in such detail to show that Sally Mann knew very well what dangers threatened her, that she went into publishing the photo album quite consciously - I remind the reader that the book was published in 1992, two years after the events described above. And when she claimed that “children's sexuality is a combination of words that are opposite in meaning,” she was aware (more precisely, she should have given) that law enforcement agencies, and many of her contemporaries, think otherwise.

Before publishing the book, the author tried to protect herself from possible legal troubles. She consulted with representatives of the FBI and the prosecutor's office, enlisted the support of the children, and in order to betray their voices with greater persuasiveness, she sent two elders for examination by a psychologist. It was announced that children had the right to veto the publication of certain photographs - it probably was so in reality, but Sally Mann did not forget to mention this publicly. So, for example, the youngest daughter Virginia did not want readers to see how she relieves a small need, and Emmett and Jesse demanded that they remove photos in which they looked like “crazy or silly”. But the lack of clothes did not bother them at all. They were looking forward to the release of the album, and when the mother hinted at postponing the publication for several years (“until the children begin to live in other bodies”), they protested violently. In the end, it turned out that Sally Mann decided to publish only yielding to the wishes of the children!

Be that as it may, in 1992 the book was published. It caused a quite predictable storm of emotions and brought its author all-American, and soon worldwide fame. The New Republic magazine described the album as "one of the greatest photographic books of our time," The New York Times stated that "no other photographer in history has shot to stardom so quickly." And the fact that fame turned out to be somewhat more scandalous than the author would like - apparently this could have been avoided, but then the path to the top would require much more time and effort. And would she get there? Looking ahead a little, I note that not before the release of "Immediate Family", not after that, Sally Mann did not create anything equal in terms of impact. And it's not just scandalous - just look at the album to understand that we are dealing with a great artist. Moreover, I would venture to say that for such a statement it is enough to look at the photos from the album on the monitor screen; although if you have the opportunity to purchase an album or visit an exhibition - be sure to do it.

Helmut Newton wrote in his autobiography that the story of the path to success could be interesting; the description of the success itself, "simply is of no interest to readers." This fully applies to Sally Mann, so I will only schematically describe her further work. In 1994, she published her fourth book, Still Time, which included both photographs of her children and earlier sketches of nature, several abstract photographs. In 2003, the album "What Remains" was released, in which she decided to show different facets of the world around us: here are mysterious landscapes, close-ups of children's faces, and half-decomposed corpses (an association with a snake from dog excrement at the dining room involuntarily arises). little Sally's desk). “Death is powerful and is best seen as a vantage point from which life can be seen more fully. That is why my project ends with pictures of living people, my own children,” she revealed her idea. In general, the album makes a strong, albeit depressing, impression. Sally Mann's sixth photo album Deep South (2005) includes 65 landscape photographs taken between 1992 and 2004.

The release of each album was accompanied by exhibitions that were successfully held in America and Europe. Of course, she exhibited not only photographs included in the albums, exhibition visitors could get acquainted with her successful and not so successful experiments in various fields. So, after "Deep South" she made and photographed still lifes from ... dog bones for some time (again, the snake on the dining table comes to mind). “What I like about these dog bones is their vagueness, their ambiguity,” she explained. “I mean, I really love her dishonesty in photography. It has to be weird in some way, or it's not for me."

One of her latest projects is a photographic study of muscle atrophy, which her husband has suffered since 1994. This incurable disease leads to weakening of the muscles and a decrease in muscle mass (in the case of Larry Mann, in the right leg and in the left arm). It is clear that this disease does not paint a person and considerable courage is required from both spouses in order to continue working. Sally calls the project "Marital Trust" - it includes all aspects of life: washing, morning toilet, gardening, even sex. Will we ever see these photos? “I only know that they exist and that they are good,” says the photographer, “maybe they will never be published. Maybe after my death. But the fact that these photographs are in a box in my laboratory is of great importance to me.”

There are very few examples of such projects in the history of photography: to be honest, the only ones that come to my mind are Richard Avedon and Pedro Meyer, who photographed the process of dying of their parents. In all likelihood, Sally Mann has the unfortunate honor of being the first female photographer to do this, so perhaps we will have to witness the scandal associated with her name.

Now we can say with confidence that Sally Mann is one of the most significant American photographers of the late XX - early XXI century. She has received a number of prestigious awards and titles, her photographs are sold at auctions and are included in the permanent exhibitions of the world's leading museums. She was the subject of two documentaries: "Blood Ties" ("Blood Ties", 1994), nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Documentary, and "The Remains" ("What Remains", 2005), won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Atlanta Film Festival.

Sally Mann's work tells the stories of the American South - mystical, sometimes frightening. The United States appears in them as a country that seems to exist outside of time. We recall how Mann creates his black and white masterpieces.

“The best photographer in school helped me develop my first film and we are thrilled with the result. Lots of pictures of plank patterns, cracked paint textures on the walls... The sharpness and depth are really good. I feel happiness and pride... It's unbelievable. Although, perhaps, the result is a complete coincidence.

This teenage text belongs to one of the most famous photographers in the world - Sally Mann. The beginning of her career was quite prosaic: a prestigious college on the East Coast (Putney's private school in Vermont), sports, libraries, workshops, celebrity lectures - American youth in all its glory, a girl from a wealthy family begins her way to an independent life. However, the path to a great career - hundreds of exhibitions around the world, prestigious galleries, documentaries and monographs - was not so easy.

Sally Mann was born in a completely different place - in the American South, in the small and sleepy town of Lexington, Virginia. Father - a doctor, mother was in charge of the university bookstore. Mann grew up fully integrated into the landscape: “I was almost a wild child, raised not by wolves, but by twelve boxer dogs that my father kept on a honeysuckle-filled, dark and mystical 30-acre plot of land.”

Moving to Vermont and starting college was not easy for young Mann: sometimes it is easier to cross the ocean than a southerner to settle in the North. “I was the minority subjected to the most sophisticated jokes. In Putney they didn't dye their hair, they didn't wear make-up and they didn't listen to music like the Righteous Brothers… I ended up in another country,” recalls Sally Mann in her autobiography Hold Still. Like a saving straw, in college she will grab onto a photograph.

Moving to Vermont and starting college was not easy for young Mann: sometimes it is easier to cross the ocean than a southerner to settle in the North.

Although I live in America, sometimes I miss it - under New York's leaden skies I think of the South: a mystical place that gave rise to great literature, modernity-denying, conservative and painfully beautiful. At times like these, I pull out an album of Sally Mann's photographs from the shelf. As she often writes herself, “life in the South often means going out of temporal space. Southerners live uneasily between myth and reality, watching an amalgam of sorrow, humility, honor, mercy and apostasy play out against the backdrop of the extravagant beauty of the landscape. Dropped out of modernity, the South is preoccupied with its past. Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama - in these states, nostalgia and horror of historical memory shape the present and the future.

To exist outside of time, Sally uses the half-forgotten technique of collodion printing: the image is transferred using a large wooden camera onto a wet, chemically coated glass plate. The whole process of shooting and developing takes 15 minutes, but the result never disappoints: the photos are meditative, deep, thoughtful.

Collodion printing is a technique of the 19th century, the technique of photographers who filmed the Civil War between the South and the North - the brilliant and courageous Matthew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, Alexander Gardner. Skillful use of collodion allows time and space to "travel" through Mann's work, to stretch, to last, not to happen. When is that? Where is it? What's happening? What will happen? Time here is a decoration; it seems that the photographer is just trying to tell us that life is hard enough.

Simple, everyday events in her works receive a universal, mystical meaning. In Deep South, a beautiful homage to the homeland, the transition from family portraits to landscapes becomes a transition from private, individual memories to more public and emotional memories of those whose past is revealed by footprints left in the environment. “I visit the places where the battles of the Civil War took place, on a different earth, a century later, in search of an answer to the question: does the earth remember?”

Body

At the end of the last century, the attitude of artists to the human body changed radically. Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Francesca Woodman, Kiki Smith - artists of the new wave refused to consider the body only as an object of desire and admiration. The body in their works is a battlefield for self-identification. Since then, modern practices in art are not a combination of artist and nude model, sexual object and symbol; on the contrary, in photography and performance, the owner of the body is the artist, and the body itself is a weapon in the fight against gender, social, political, and economic injustice. And Sally Mann has a lot to do with this change.

“I gained recognition and notoriety, but also the nasty label of 'controversial' in the early 1990s, after the publication of my third book, 'Immediate Family'. It contained photographs of my children, Emmett, Jesse and Virginia, living their lives, sometimes without clothes, on our farm nestled in the hills of Virginia. I believed that my lens should remain open to fully capture their childhood. I photographed good luck, harmony, isolation, as well as difficulties that are usually common at this age: bruises, vomiting, bloody noses, wet beds.

The photographs of the What Remains series, taken in the early 2000s, show human bodies that have left time and space forever, left to the mercy of weather and natural disasters. The scene is a small piece of land owned by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This is a scientific experiment - the study of cyclicity, how we, having left this world, become part of it. “Who knows the future fate of their bones or how often they will be reburied? Who is the oracle for his own ashes? Who knows if the bones will just be scattered after death? I always remember this phrase of the English philosopher, writer, physician Thomas Browne (1605-1682) from the treatise "Burial in Urns" when looking at these pictures of Sally Mann. Brown and Mann are different universes, but here they intersect: an American photographer is engaged in a dialogue with an essayist of the Baroque era. I have never experienced the horror of a work of art like the horror of watching What Remains.

Soul

The city of Lexington was lucky: two of America's most important artists, Cy Twombly and Sally Mann, were born and lived in it. They were friends. Mann writes about a friend like this: “I remember many evenings when I was waiting for children from school and met a tall, slightly stooped figure, in high socks, tightly wrapped in a raincoat, wandering from home to the workshop along Barclay Lane ... We became friends and compatriots , comrades and helpers.

The result of this many years of friendship is the Sally Mann exhibition "Remembered Light", dedicated to the deceased Twombly. It will take place in New York's Gagosian Gallery and will talk about the existential emptiness that remains when a strong, working, creative person leaves this world. Each photo in this portfolio asks questions that have no answers.

Life sometimes consists of subtractions: the list of relatives decreases, folds like shagreen leather. While preparing the exhibition, Sally learns devastating news: her thirty-six-year-old son Emmett Mann, who suffers from schizophrenia, commits suicide. Looking at the numerous portraits of Emmett as a child and already knowing his fate, I understand that life will not be favorable to this boy.

I believe that the human soul was captured by Sally Mann's camera when I look at the family portrait taken at the Boxerwood estate at the time of the burial of her father's ashes.

“My mother is holding the ashes of my father, and we are preparing to put the urn in the crypt. Noon, May 28, Saturday. I set up my camera to take a souvenir photo. Not an easy task with this crowd… We are all tired, sad and ready to drink. I had time for one photo and asked our friend Hunter to release the shutter after I got my camera ready and back to the subjects. Hesitantly saying "Smile," she pulled the trigger. The old "Goerz Dagor" lens let in light for one tenth of a second. That's all. Two days later I developed the film."

This American woman became famous for her candid shots, in which her children were the main characters. In poignant photos, the game and reality were mixed, resulting in a wonderful cocktail called "Next of Kin", which caused a real flurry of emotions. The photographer was hit by public criticism, and Sally Mann (Sally Mann) was accused of veiled child pornography.

Scandalous project

The author of provocative works, whose favorite technique is black and white photography, was born in 1951 in Virginia. Even at school, a little girl loves to develop pictures, and with age she begins experiments with nudity. After graduating from college, she works as a photographer and arranges solo exhibitions of her works. However, critics do not pay attention to the new name, and Sally Mann's work remains unknown to the general public.

And only in 1992, when the project "Closest Relatives" saw the light, did the American become famous. Unfortunately, she gained fame after a scandal broke out, when a respectable public saw obscene poses in children's photographs. "Intimate shots are completely normal things that I see as a mother," said Sally Mann. The children of the author of works that caused resonance in society were involved in the creative process from infancy, and the woman considers successful shots a real gift of fate.

Documented family life

So she documented the life of her family, revealing the happy childhood of three children under the age of 10 from unexpected angles that the public perceived with indignation. The footage was taken while relaxing in a family house by the river, where daughters and son had fun and played in the nude, and housewives could not understand how it was possible to put their children on public display in this form.

The author of the scandalous photos foresaw a violent reaction from society and consulted with lawyers who said that for some of the pictures she could even be arrested. Sally wanted to postpone the exhibition for 10 years, so that the grown-up children would make their own decision and understand the consequences of making the images public. However, the guys did not want to wait so long, and a psychologist was invited to them, who made sure that they consciously make their choice, understanding what the publication could lead to. The children themselves selected the frames they liked for the album. The well-known psychiatrist A. Esman said after the scandal that the pictures that provoked public anger "are not erotically stimulating."

Be that as it may, but the album was released, and fierce criticism did not interfere with the growth of popularity.

Viewer reviews

The audience was divided into two camps: some were outraged by the provocative pictures that depicted children, others reacted to the veiled erotica with understanding, believing that the photographer Sally Mann, who knew about the puritanical upbringing of society, deliberately took such a step to add to her popularity. She knew exactly what kind of reaction a controversial project would cause. However, the thoughtful public saw harmony and beauty in everyday life in talented black and white works.

New provocation

Another scandal erupted 13 years ago at an exhibition in Washington, which bore the telling name "Remains". The main theme was death, about which Sally Mann said that "it must be perceived as a kind of point that allows you to more fully see life." Viewers who have become acquainted with the works, united by the theme of the inevitability of the end, understand that the shadow of an old woman with a scythe haunts them all the time.

An American exhibits what is left of a dead dog on public display, removes decomposed bodies, but the last part of the exhibition, dedicated to her children, inspires hope, and studies of death end with love. The author of provocative works claims that the inevitability of death helps us to feel the fullness of life, painted with iridescent hues.

Investigation of the husband's illness

In the galleries of the world, a successful photographer exhibits the work of the early period of creativity, showing the world from different angles. She creates abstract pictures, landscapes, and some of them look into the lens of Sally Mann's sick husband - Larry, who suffers from muscle atrophy. The American woman displayed her long family life in a separate project called "Spousal Trust" and covering thirty years of photos, including the most intimate ones.

With courage, she explores an incurable disease, honestly looking into the lens of her camera. She knows that the viewer may not see all the candid works, but this does not frighten her: "Perhaps they will only get acquainted with them after my death, but I know that the photographs are already in the laboratory."

Monochrome works

Describing the nature of the unique work of the master, who has received many prestigious awards, is not an easy task. The shots of the original author resemble dreams or visions. The staged photographs of Sally Mann are kept to a minimum, and her characters resemble people living on another planet and gradually forgetting about their past.

The absence of color in the works is a conscious choice of the creator, who vividly manifests a unique style and creates a special magic. An American with a talent from God sees our world through a camera lens differently than ordinary people, and she tries to convey her view of reality to the audience. Some of her works cause real delight, while others condemn them.

Children's problems in the photo

The protagonist of two documentaries, Sally Mann, whose photographs often show her family members, captures various episodes of childhood and touches on difficult moments in a child's life. It tells about loneliness, self-doubt, vicious thoughts, which are not customary to talk about openly in society, and such sincerity is shocking to many. The master reveals the problems that concern children at any age, to which parents often turn a blind eye.

unreal landscapes

It must be admitted that the winner in 2001 of the award "Best Photographer of America" ​​Sally captures not only people, but also creates stunning monochrome landscapes. Thanks to a special vision of the environment, she produces mystical works, and it seems to the audience that they are entering another reality, where there is no human fuss. This is a completely different world in which life flows according to its own laws and rules.

Sally Mann: banned photographer

In 2015, Roskomnadzor blocked the pages of the world's leading art portal, which contained pictures of an American woman often accused of child pornography. Russian users won't be able to see the controversial master's work, which includes a rare "Three Graces" photograph taken in 1994. It depicts three naked girls.

Now Sally, whose black-and-white works are presented in various galleries and museums around the world, lives with her family on a farm in Virginia and continues to work, once again referring to the theme of the human body.

She was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1951. Sally is the third of three children and the only girl in the family of physician Robert S. Munger. Her mother, Elizabeth Evans Munger, ran a bookstore at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. Mann graduated from the Putney School in 1969, then attended Bennington College and Friends World College. She received her Bachelor's degree with honors in liberal arts from Hollins College (now Hollins University) in 1974 and her master's degree in creative writing in 1975. The photographic debut took place in Putney with the image of a naked classmate.

Carier start

After graduation, Mann worked as a photographer at Washington and Lee University. In the mid-1970s, she photographed the construction of a new law school building, which led to her first solo exhibition in late 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC. These surreal images were part of the first book, Second Sight, published in 1984.

"At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women"

Sally Mann's second collection of photographs, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, published in 1988, is dedicated to teenage girls.

"Closest Relatives"

Perhaps the most famous was Mann's third collection, Next of Kin, published in 1992. The NY Times wrote, "Perhaps no other photographer in history has been so successful in the art world."

The book consists of 65 black and white photographs of the photographer's three children under the age of 10. Many of the shots were taken during the family's summer vacation in the house by the river, where children played and swam in the nude. For these shots in America and abroad, Sally Mann was accused of distributing child pornography. Some religious figures also came out with hot criticism.

But there were also positive reviews. The New Republic magazine wrote that it was "one of the greatest photobooks of our time".

Mann has always put the best interests of her children first. Before publishing the Next of Kin photo album, she consulted with a Virginia federal prosecutor, who told her that some of the images she showed could put her under arrest.

She decided to delay the publication for 10 years, so that the children would grow up and understand what the consequences of the publication of these images. But the kids didn't seem to like it. Then Mann and her husband arranged for Emmett and Jessie (Sally Mann's older children) to meet with a psychologist to make sure they understood what the publication could lead to. Each child was allowed to select frames that would be included in the book.

Child psychiatrist Aaron Yesman wrote that the photographs do not appear erotically stimulating to anyone but "hardened pedophiles or dogmatists or religious fundamentalists."

Sally Mann's fourth book, Still Time, published in 1994, is based on a traveling exhibition catalog of photographs taken over a 20-year period. The 60 shots included portraits of her children, early landscapes and abstract images.

Later career

In the mid-1990s, Mann began photographing landscapes with wet collodion using glass plates. These landscape images were featured in two exhibitions in New York at the Edwynn Houk Gallery.

Mann's fifth photo album, What Remains, was published in 2003 in five parts. It included photographs of the decaying remains of a greyhound by photographer Eva; photographs of bodies from the morgue; detailing the place where the armed escaped criminal was killed; footage filmed in the area where the bloodiest one-day battle in American history took place, the Battle of Antietham during the Civil War; close-up images of children's faces. Thus, this study of mortality, decay and destruction ends with hope and love.

Mann's seventh book, The Proud Flesh, was published in 2009. This is a six-year study of the muscular dystrophy of her husband named Larry. The project was exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery in October 2009.

Mann's eighth publication is the 200-page book Flesh and Spirit, published in 2010. It included self-portraits, landscapes, images of her husband, faces of children and images of corpses. The general theme of the collection is the body with all its whims, illnesses and mortality.

One of the current projects is called "Marital Trust" (Marital Trust). It covers 30 years of photographs, including the most intimate details of Sally and Larry's family life. No press release has yet been announced.

Personal life

Sally Mann met her husband Larry in 1969. They have three children together: Emmett (born 1979, briefly joined the Peace Corps), Jessie (born 1981, artist, photographer, model) and Virginia (born 1985, lawyer). Sally Mann lives with her husband on a farm in Virginia. He works as a lawyer, although he suffers from muscular dystrophy.

Confession

Sally Mann's work is included in the permanent collections of many museums, among them: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum in New York and many others. others

Time magazine named Mann "America's Best Photographer" in 2001. Her work has appeared twice on the cover of this edition.
Mann has been the subject of two documentaries directed by Steve Cantor. Blood Ties debuted at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Short Film category. The second film, The Remains, directed by the same director, was first shown in 2006. The film was nominated for an Emmy for Best Documentary in 2008.

Photos by Sally Mann:

Widely known for her large format, black and white photographs, first of her young children, and later for landscapes suggesting decay and death.

early life and education

In May 2011, she delivered a three-day Massey lecture series at Harvard. In June 2011, Mann sat down with one of her contemporaries, Nan Goldin, at the LOOK3 Charlottesville photography festival. The two photographers discussed their careers, in particular the ways in which photographing personal lives became a source of professional controversy. This was followed by an appearance at the University of Michigan, as part of the Penny W. Lecture Stamps series.

The ninth book of Manna, Get moving: A Memoir with photos, released May 12, 2015, is a confluence of a memoir of her youth, an examination of some of the major influences of her life, and a reflection on how photographs shape her view of the world. It is complemented by numerous photographs, letters and other memorabilia. She singles out her "almost bestial" childhood and her subsequent introduction of photography to Putney, her relationship with her husband of 40 and the mysterious death of her parents, and nostalgia for a maternal Welsh relative to land morphing into her love for her land in the Shenandoah Valley, as some of her important influences. Go-Go, a black woman who was a surrogate parent who opened Mann's eyes to race relationships and exploitation, her relationship with local artist Soi Twombly and her father's noble Southern legacy and eventual death are also considered. New York Times described it as "a classic among southern memories of the last 50 years". An article by Mann adapted from this book appeared with photographs in The New York Times Magazine April 2015 stir was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award.

Tenth Book of Mann Remembered Light: Cy Twombly in Lexington was published in 2016. This is a photographic inside look at Cy Twombly at a studio in Lexington. It was published at the same time as an exhibition of color and black-and-white photographs at the Gagosian Gallery. It shows an overflow of Twombly's general modus operandi: than leftovers, smears and smudges, or, as Simon Shama said in his article at the beginning of the book, "absence turned into presence."

Eleventh Book of Mann, Sally Mann: Thousand Cross, authored by Sarah Greenough and Sarah Nursery, is a large (320 page) collection of works spanning 40 years, with 230 photographs by Mann. It served as a catalog for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art titled Sally Mann: Thousand Crosses, which opened on March 4, 2018 and was the first major review of the artist's work to travel internationally.

In her latest projects, Mann began to explore issues of race and the legacy of slavery, which were the central theme of her memoirs. stir. They include a series of portraits of black men, all done in a one-hour studio session with models that were previously unfamiliar to her. Mann was inspired by Bill T. Jones' Walt Whitman's 1856 use of the poem "The Poem of the Body" in his art, and Mann "borrowed the idea of ​​using the poem as a template for [her] own intelligence". Several photographs from this body work were highlighted in Aperture Foundation magazine in the summer of 2016, and they also appeared in Thousand crossings. This book and exhibition also featured a series of photographs of African American historic churches photographed on exhaled film, and a series of tinplate photographs of a swamp that served as a refuge for fugitive slaves. Some critics see Mann's work as a deep exploration of the legacy of white violence in the South, while others have expressed concern that Mann's work is sometimes repetitive rather than a critique of the tropes of white domination and violence in the American Southeast.

Personal life

Mann, born and raised in Virginia, was the daughter of Robert Munger and Elizabeth Munger. In Manna's introduction for his book Immediate Family she "expresses stronger memories of a black woman, Virginia Carter, who oversaw her upbringing than for her own mother." Elizabeth Munger was not a big part of Mann's life, and told Elizabeth "Sally may look like me, but inside she's a father's child." Virginia (gee-gee) Carter, born in 1894, raised Mann and her two brothers and was a wonderful woman. "Left with six kids and the public education system, for which she paid taxes, but which forbade classes for black kids outside of seventh grade, Gee Gee managed somehow to send each of them out of state boarding schools and, in Ultimately, college." Virginia Carter died in 1994.

In 1969, Sally Mann met Larry and they married in 1970. Larry Mann is a lawyer and, before practicing law, he was a blacksmith. Larry was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy around 1996. They live together in a house they built on the Sally family's farm in Lexington, Virginia.

They have three children: Emmett (b.1979), who took his life in 2016, after a life-threatening car collision and subsequent battle with schizophrenia, and who, for a time, served in the Peace Corps; Jessie (b.1981), who is herself an artist and was a candidate for a degree in neuroscience, and whose heroes include Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr., and Madonna; and Virginia (b.1985), now a lawyer.

She is passionate about endurance racing. In 2006, her Arabian horse ruptured into an aneurysm while she was riding with him. In the horse's agony, Manna was thrown to the ground, the horse rolling over her, and the influence broke her. It took her two years to recover from the accident, and during that time, she made a series of ambrotype self-portraits. These self-portraits were on view for the first time in November 2010 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as part of Sally Mann: Flesh and Spirit .

confession

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of New York among many others.

Time magazine named Mann "America's Best Photographer" in 2001. Photos she took appeared on the cover The New York Times Magazine twice: first, a painting of her three children on the September 27, 1992 issue with a feuilleton on her "disturbing work", and again on September 9, 2001, with a self-portrait (which also included her two daughters) for the issue of the theme "Women looking on women."

Mann has been the subject of two documentaries. First, blood ties, was directed by Steve Cantor, debuted at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary. Secondly, what remains also directed by Stephen Cantor. Premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Emmy for Best Documentary in 2008 for her New York Times reviewing the film, Ginia Bellafant wrote, "This is one of the most exquisitely intimate portraits not only of the artist's process, but of marriage and life, to appear on television in recent times."

Mann received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Corcoran College of Art + Design in May 2006. The Royal Photographic Society (UK) awarded her an Honorary Fellowship in 2012.

Mann won the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction for move: a memoir in photographs .

Publications

books

• Mann, Sally (1983). Second Sight: pictured by Sally Mann. ISBN.
• At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women. Aperture, New York, 1988. ISBN
• Immediate Family. Aperture, New York, 1992. ISBN
• Still time. Aperture, New York, 1994. ISBN
• Mann, Sally (2003). What remains. Bulfinch Press. ISBN.
• Mann, Sally (2005). deep south. Bulfinch. ISBN.
• Sally Mann(2005), 21 - Editions, South Dennis, MA (Edition 110)
• Sally Mann: Proud Flesh. Aperture Press; Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, 2009. ISBN
• John B. Ravenal; David Levy Strauss; Sally Mann; Ann Wilkes Tucker (2010). Sally Mann: Flesh and Spirit. aperture. ISBN.
• southern landscape(2013), 21 - Editions, South Dennis, MA (Edition 58)
• Mann, Sally (2015). Move: A Memoir with Photos. Little, Brown.