American photographer Sally Mann is a photographer steeped in black and white photos. An American photographer born in Lexington Virginia, an only daughter of three to the parents of Robert S. Munger and Elizabeth Evans Munger. Sally made her photographic debut from her photography that she did at The Putney School and came out with an image of a nude classmate. Her father was promoted her photography with his 5X7 large format camera that has become the basis of her work even to this day.
Proceeding Sally's graduation from Hollins University in 1974. She worked as a staff photographer for Washington and Lee University. While there she photographed the construction of the lewis law library in the mid 1970's. Which later lead her to have her own exhibition in 1977 and was put into her first book Second Sight, published in 1984.
Sally's next collection following Second Sight was At Twelve: Portraits of a Young Woman, this selection stimulated controversy. The images “captured the confusing emotions and developing identities of adolescent girls [and the] expressive printing style lent a dramatic and brooding mood to all of her images.” (Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL)
Sally is known best for her work, Immediate Family. This collection turned very controversial do to the nature of the images. The book contains 65 black and white images of her children under the age of ten, being photographed mostly at there very remote cabin where her children played and swam in the river in the nude. Many of the pictures displayed are those of her kids doing there everyday activities, of reading the funnies, swimming, playing and relaxing. However others touch on darker themes such as insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death. The controversy on her set of was intense, with accusations of child porn for instance. For Sally Mann the mother of all three of these kids photographed it was a completely different feeling for her when she photographed these images and even when she published them. These images to Sally were purely images of a mothers love and the beauty of capturing images of her children. Critics agreed with her and saying her “vision in large measure [is] accurate, and a welcome corrective to familiar notions of youth as a time of unalloyed sweetness and innocence,” (Charles Hagen, “Review/Art; Childhood Without Sweetness.” The New York Times, June 5, 1992). and that the book “created a place that looked like Eden, then cast upon it the subdued and shifting light of nostalgia, sexuality and death." (Lyle Rexer, “Art/Architecture; Marriage Under Glass: Intimate Exposures”, ‘’The New York Times, November 10, 2000). When Time magazine named her “America’s Best Photographer” in 2001, they said:
“Mann recorded a combination of spontaneous and carefully arranged moments of childhood repose and revealingly — sometimes unnervingly — imaginative play. What the outraged critics of her child nudes failed to grant was the patent devotion involved throughout the project and the delighted complicity of her son and daughters in so many of the solemn or playful events. No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care.” (Reynolds Price, ‘’Time Magazine’’ July 9, 2001) Sally's fourth book, Still Time, published in 1994 was based on a traveling exhibition of 20 years of photography including some images of her children also.
Sally Mann is by far my favorite photographer of our tim and i cannot say enough about her. Or for that matter tell you enough about her. Her photography does not end here but for her later career I will share that with you in another post. as for now here is some of my favorite photos from her book Immediate Family.
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