sally mann landscapes jen agosta | desma...

“The things that are close to you are the things that you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph the things you love, you aren’t going to make good art.”… “It’s always been my philosophy to try and make art out of the everyday and ordinary.”

Sally Mann, the American photographer born in Lexington Virginia in 1951, shoots what is close to her – geographically and emotionally. Her work, which has been considered controversial at times, evokes a duality of rawness and grace that is materialized through techniques that embrace the handcrafted photographic process and the history of photography that has preceded her. She shoots in 8x10 black and white. In response to a question about her love for shooting in monochrome, she said “It makes you get right to the essence of what you are taking the picture of. You are not distracted by the color. Color is an entirely different way of thinking.”

The topics in her many series of photographs include both portraits and landscape, and sometimes both, often with family members, deceased people, or places where death has occurred. Her initial photographic intentions were documentary in origin but have grown into a narrative. She thinks of herself as humdrum and ordinary and rejects the idea of being referred to as a genius, attributes her work and creativity to serendipity, obsession, and hard work. She follows the notion of Gustave Flaubert’s quote “Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.” She applies it to her own life by interpreting it to say “Be ordinary and organized in life so you can be outrageous and original in your art.”

Southern Landscapes was the series that brought her initial accolades. Capturing the land and historic architecture, her haunting black and white images capture a particular essence of her interpretation of what it means to live in the South. In her book, Southern Landscapes, she writes, “Living in the South means being both nourished and wounded by the experience. To identify a person as a Southerner is always to suggest not only that her history is inescapable and profoundly formative, but that it is also imperishably present. Southerners live

at the nexus between myth and reality where that peculiar amalgam of sorrow, humility, honor, loyalty, graciousness and renegade defiance plays out against a backdrop of profligate physical beauty.”

Her series What Remains is a study in five parts of different stages of death and decomposition as part of the cycle of life. Four of the five parts have landscape elements. First is a series of photographs of the remains of her beloved greyhound Eva after digging up her bones from their burial place in the families yard. Second is a series of photographs of dead and decomposing bodies at a “body farm” – a forensic anthropology facility where bodies are left out in fields to decompose and be studied. The third part documents the portion of her property where an armed escape convict was killed. The fourth is the Battleground at Antietam where the historic bloody war was fought in 1862.

The Antietam landscape photographs What Remains were shot from 2000 to 2003. She chose that location because it was “charged” with energy due to all the death that had taken place there during the historic battle. To “pay homage to her subjects” she shot the landscape with an 8x10 view camera onto glass plates using the Collodion process – a method that requires a portable darkroom in the field enabling the photographer to coat the glass plate, then sensitize, expose and develop them into negatives it within about 15 minutes. Sally Mann works out the of the back of her SUV with blacked out windows. The historical photo process has the potential for many technical problems. Because of this, she says “The Antietam pictures are blessed with the gift of failure and the sense of timelessness.” She says, “There is a certain synchronicity about the use of the Collodion process for photographing Antietam since that was the process that was used at the actual battle of Antietam.

She admits during a 2016 Interview discussing her memoir “Hold Still,” that she doesn’t think she was born an artist, and that she made herself one because she felt like she had not other prospects in life based on the “vapidity” of her youth and her lack of ability and talent in other areas.

SALLY MANN | LANDSCAPES JEN AGOSTA | DESMA 154

Sally Mann, Southern Landscapes, 1998

Sally Mann, Southern Landscapes, 1996

Sally Mann, Southern Landscapes, 1992-1996

Sally Mann, Antietam, 2000-2003

WARNINGThe next three images contain decomposing human bodies.

But the images are beaut i fu l and power ful , so hang in there.

Sally Mann, Body Farm, 2000-2001

sally mann landscapes jen agosta | desma...

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