The death series was to be shown in September 2003 in the Pace Gallery NYC but got cancelled 4 months prior to the show. Sally was left defeated and disappointed and lost self confidence.

6 months later, she was allowed to show her work at Corcoran Museum in Washington. 

What Remains...

Sally Mann approached this book very differently from all the others. She openly noted that she wasn’t going to be blind sighted to these death photos as was previously with the children’s photos. “It’s ok if people are mad”, she says. She was going to raise it intellectually, as a reflection. To her death is less scary or something to be feared with others, partly because of her husband’s disease and partly because of her dad as she watched him die and he approached it fearlessly. 

The show was to end on a positive note, by ending it with pictures of her grown children. To embrace the living, love life an uplift. 

‘[you are] not there after you die. Your body is just a carapace/ a shoe that holds the real you. When you die  all that’s left is the carapace. It’s meaningless’

- Sally Mann

Sally Mann is and has for a long time been fascinated by death. First occurring with the death of her dog, Eva. But then for her book ‘What Remains’ she wanted to photograph people because then it was more relevant to people in particular otherwise  the images wouldn’t have the same power to make people think or delve into the idea she was trying to bring across. The book includes photographs taken at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center, the remains of Mann's dog Eva and some close-ups of her now grown children.

 Her death series was explored in 2 ways in particular: what happens to the landscape and the dead?

‘The earth doesn’t care where death occurs. Its job is to efface and renew itself. It’s the artist who by coming in or writing about it or painting it or taking a photograph of it makes the earth powerful and creates death’s memory because the land isn’t going to remember by itself but the artist will’.

8th December 2000

A convict escapes to Mann family farm. He shot himself after getting shot on the hip by the police and knew that'd he'd obviously go back to prison. Mann went to the place where the suicide happened, fascinated:

'... at the base of a hickory tree was a glistening pool of dark blood. I was tempted to touch its perfectly tensioned surface. Instead, as I stared, it shrank perceptibly ... as if the Earth had taken a delicate sip.'

 This changed her way of thinking and became a new project for her. ‘WHAT HAPPENS TO A LANDSCAPE AFTER MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DEATH HAPEN TO IT?”

from Deep South

At first Sally was afraid she’d be laughed at but her landscape work got really good reviews, although she does question whether the people actually liked the work or the fact they saw that she could do something different.


Here's one of the books of her landscape work: Deep South

magic in the landscape.

Sally Mann had grown up a feral child and always found magic in the landscape. She even went to describe the way when she was a child, she would run to her  honeysuckle cave and that gave her a womblike feeling of nature and that’s what she now tries show in her photographs,. ‘There is magic in the landscape, I try capture it’ she says.  (Sorry for the inconsistent jump) After the Immediate family the transition from taking photos of her children to landscape can be seen, as her children gradually get smaller in the picture and the bigger picture becomes the landscape around them. 

When Sally Mann was given her first camera, her dad told her that 'the only things worth of art were love, death and whimsy'

 "No woman has ever turned a camera so candidly on a man."

      - critic observation from The New York Times

At the first exhibition for 'Proud Flesh' Sally Mann encountered, once again, some controversy. The pictures were considered immodest by some of the people who went to see the exhibition. This book addresses love and married life in its raw and pure form. The daily activities that go on in the household to nudity to sex. Some people just didn't really see it that way, for them it was indecent exposure. Sally Mann was once again pressing buttons and shoving reality down the public's throat, a reality which some were uncomfortable with; one they wanted to be kept at arms length. 
Call me biased, but I think it is simply amazing. To make beauty out a tragedy and to approach a subject with such candor and intensity.


From watching the documentary 'What Remains: The life and work of Sally Mann' you can see the love and feel the pain that she is going through dealing with her husband's disease.  In this she also comes to question and consider her own mortality. Asking herself the question of how she's like her pictures to be seen after she passes away, in which her simple response is “I don’t want to leave vapid, meaningless pictures obviously, but I don’t want to leave behind anything that’s hurtful, to him or anyone else”

"My mother has no blinders on. She will always look intensely upon whatever is closest to her"
-Jessie Mann

Proud Flesh

Larry Mann has Muscular dystrophy. Mann, in her documentary, describes herself as being in a little bit of denial about it, and the book 'Proud Flesh' essentially is her coming to terms with her husband’s disease. The opening image of the book (below) shows only a part of her husband, his torso with the reference name of 'Hephaestus' whom in Greek history was a lame blacksmith. Looking more into it, I personally read it as a man with so much talent despite a disability which in many ways I see it’s the way Mann looks on at her husband.

 The disease tends to eat away at your muscles, in opposites e.g right arm and left leg. This may be looking too much into what may be an accident, but in the photo we see the 'blemish' on the photo transcending from one part of the body to the other. The sad part, for me, is the fact that the distortion gets bigger as it gets closer to his heart, showing a hole, and the left side is significantly darker. This piece is absolutely beautiful, and very strong as a description of what they're going through, as a couple.

a love story.

(This has to be one of my favorite love stories) 


Sally met Larry Mann when she was 18yrs old, just before Christmas and it was love at first sight.  She had a boyfriend when she met  Larry Mann, he was actually the best friend of her then boyfriend. She was absolutely stunned by Larry Mann's strength when he lifted a boulder off the front of their house (one that was too heavy for Sally's father and boyfriend to lift together). When her boyfriend saw at the way Sally looked at Larry Mann as he moved the boulder, he (actually) told her they were going to get married! And they did! They got married in the New Year and have currently been married for over 33yrs. Larry Mann is a sculptor and practising law. He has been photographed by Sally in the book ‘Proud Flesh’ which shows their marital trust. Sally goes to describe this as the daily things of married life, the things she sees. She says the series is marital trust because ‘he has to believe that these pictures will be nice’ for him to go all out.


Now that's love!

To understand this book, you have to understand Sally Mann's childhood. 

Following up from my previous post about Sally Mann's Childhood you can see she was already a very different soul. Her family was quirky and eccentric, especially her father. The book becomes a lot less controversial when you realise that she grew up differently, she didn't want her children to grow up in any other way. 'The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree' so to say. She wanted her children to grow up in that same acceptability she had, and freedom to express themselves and concerning the naked pictures, she goes to explain since their home was five miles from anyone to see, she felt it no danger to have her kids run around or swim naked in the river. I personally understand, but I understand why people may feel differently upon her perpespictive of her 'muses'.


What does everyone else think?

This is one of my favorite books! I love every photograph in it, from the mystery and sheer beauty that just stands out to you. Recently my friend told me "Some of the images are just wrong. It is disturbing, I mean why would you put such pictures of your children?" and I finally understood  the controversy which before seemed to me like people without imagination. I still love this book and don't see the controversy, the images are very creative and delicate. It's just absorbing.

THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Was an international bestseller. After the publication of this book, Mann's print sales increased, and even went to be called ‘America’s best photographer’ by Times Magazine. But her work came under the eye of public and was rendered as controversial touching on factors such as Child Pornography.

[do people] “buy prints for controversy or because they like them? I prefer the latter.” she quotes

An interesting fact is that before publishing images for her book, she had actually consulted an FBI agent just to make sure that she wouldn’t be sued on charges of pornography.

Sally Mann first came to international attention in 1992 after the  publication of her book "The Immediate Family"

“She sees the world in images” 

- Larry Mann (on describing his wife's work)

some images  from Sally Mann's Deep South
what'd you think about them?

a little more collodion

I managed to find a description of the collodion/wet-plate process

"Glass plates coated with a mixture of gun cotton and ether and bathed in a silver solution are exposed still wet in the camera. The result is a swirling, ethereal image with a center of preternatural clarity. "


- New York Times, 19/11/2000


Sally Mann encountered the Collodion process in 1972, and was taught the wet plate technique from Mark and France Scully Osterman.

did you know...

Sally Mann studied Literature in college. Ansel Adams was one of her tutors in photography workshops she attended and that’s where she learnt some of her darkroom tips and tricks.

Collodion Process.

This is the process Sally Mann uses to develop her photographs. I couldn't get a video of her doing the collodion process so I just used this one to give you a general idea of how it's done.

Sally always wanted to be an artist since she was young. Her dad was a doctor but he liked to do sculptures. There was always acceptability of her wanting to be an artist.  Her family was unconventional and didn’t support all the things other middle class families did.  She grew up with no tv, not part of a country club or church.They were always much different no matter how normal they tried to be.  She describes herself as a ‘headstrong, stubborn child’.

ART IS EVERYWHERE

Sally was given a book by her dad at the age of 6, called ‘Art Is Everywhere’. This taught her to appreciate little moments of life, and she took it to heart to present day.

Her camera was also given to her by her dad, and he taught her to use it. Sally uses a hundred years old  8x10 camera, which is fully manual (and I do mean hands on!) which requires her to use her hands as the control of the shutter speed, some damaged lenses and the collodion process to develop the photographs.

“Things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. Unless you photograph what you love, you’re not going to make good art”

- Sally Mann

fun fact of the day:

At the age of 2, Sally Mann used to love walking around naked. When told by her mum to put on some clothes, or else she wouldn't go to town, she'd reply "I don't want to go to town" and would sometimes hold her breath till she turned blue if she didn't get her own way.

- account by her mother, Elizabeth Evans Munger

(What Remains: The life and work of Sally Mann)