Sally Mann

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia in the 1950's and is one of Americas most stand out photographers in recent years. Ms Mann's work has been featured in many major international institutions has been the recipient of many grants and awards. Sally Mann has a huge portfolio including: Second Sight (1983), At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994), What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), Proud Flesh (2009) and The Flesh and the Spirit (2010). Mann has photographed in the American South since the 70's focusing on portraiture, architecture, landscape and still life however she is best known for her landscape work or her intimate portraiture collections which paint pictures of her life involving her three children and husband. Despite the controversial nature of Sally's work she has always been seen as influencial. Sally Mann quite often chose topics close to her to base her portraiture collections around, for example her second publication At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women and Immediate Family were inspired by her three young children, the series Immediate Family especially is touching as it hits all the aspects of their daily lives such as playing, sleeping and eating however also touches on larger themes such as death and cultural perceptions of sexuality.

I chose to study Sally Mann as I love the raw nature of her photographs, she lets the viewers into her life with the collections that could include incredibly sensitive areas of her life such as when  her husband Larry was suffering late-onset Muscular Dystrophy. I love the way Sally Mann chooses to photograph un-posed subjects creating raw candid shots which are full of life.

 This is a photograph by Sally Mann taken from the collection At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women which shows the epitome of beautiful natural youth. Sally Mann's photographs from this collection are examples of evidence of the passage of time.

 This photograph by Sally Mann is from the collection Immediate Family and this charming image ironically named Candy Cigarette depicts one of Sally Mann's young children staring down the lens at her mother clutching a fake toy cigarette with the attitude of someone whose witnessed a war.

 Sally Mann is incredibly well known for her landscape photography, in this photograph Sally ensures that the first thing the viewers look at is the tree on the right hand side of the image. Mann uses depth in order to draw the viewers into the photograph and along the back straight.

This photograph is from Sally Mann's collection called What Remains. As a collection What Remains is a collection which shows the epitome of evidence, the collection is full of decaying bodies, death and the last strands of life reaching out of the images. This image here shows just how close you can be before the end comes, the hands are so very nearly touching but no quite.

How I was Influenced...

Sally Mann is one of my influences because I enjoy the way she prints in black and white, I love the severity and edge that the bright white tones give the photographs and the depth within the darkness of the corners of the photographs. The main theme of Sally Mann's photography could be known as evidence however every collection is a different type of evidence, Immediate Family is evidence of family, What Remains is evidence of life and death, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women is evidence of ageing and transition. Most of Sally Mann's photographs are full of raw emotion especially when she chose to photograph her own husbands fight with late-onset muscular dystrophy for her collection Proud Flesh which she took over a six year interval. The result of the rare reversal of photographic roles are candid, extraordinarily gut wrenching and touchingly frank portraits of a man at his most vulnerable moment.

Since studying Sally Mann I have tried to use this sharp black and white tone in my work and really think it adds brightness to the photograph and helps other parts stand out while keeping others in the shadows.