Sally Mann

Nigh Blooming Cereus © Sally Mann

Sally Mann


Damaged Child © Sally Mann

Sally Mann was borin in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia. She received a BA from Hollins College in 1974, and a MA in writing in 1975. She resides in Virginia still, with her husband and three children, Jessie, Emmet and Virginia.
\
Mann uses a large format, 100 year old camera that requires her hand as a shutter, and produces 8x10 negatives. Known for her skill in print making, she uses a equally old and beaten up enlarger, and always prints black and white. For her landscape work, which she has recently began photographing more, Mann likes to use damaged lenses and negatives.


Candy Cigarette © Sally Mann

Her main focus in photography for the longest time was her children. She photographed Jessie, Emmet and Virginia throughout their childhood, displaying the every day life of a child, and the every day things, no matter how trivial, that a mother sees and deals with. Her photos are often deemed controversial, though, because her children are, more often than not, naked in them. What Mann is trying to depict is the care freeness and innocence of childhood, and the bumps along the way.

There are so many levels to childhood that we as a society ignore, or don't accept. Rather than just saying it, she (Sally Mann) was able to capture it with photographs. It's easy to discount these things unless you can really see them in the kids' eyes, or see it in their actions.” –Jessie Mann


Jessie At Five © Sally Mann

Mann’s books include “At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women”, which depict a number of girls, including her own daughters, at the age of twelve. “Immediate Family” is a collection of photos she took between 1984-1991 of her children, and had garnered the most attention due to the subject matter of naked children. Even so, her work is extremely popular with many fans. Her book of landscapes is called “Mother Land: Recent Landscapes of Georgia and Virginia”, and features black and white stills of her home and it’s surrounding landscapes.

Mann has been featured in many museums, including MoMA and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C.




“…the things that are close to you, are the things you can photograph the bes…and unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art…it’s always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary…it never occurred to me to leave home to make art.” – Sally Mann


"What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann" (clip)




Works Cited

Art:21. “Sally Mann. Biography.” Art In the Twenty First Century. [http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/]

College Street Journal. “Sally Mann’s Powerful Photograhps Disturb, Facisnate”. [http://www.mtholyoke.edu]

Fletcher, Jane. “Uncanny Resemblances”. [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/n.paradoxa/fletch.htm] 1991.

Osbourn, Valerie. “Sally Mann’s Immediate Family: The Unflinching and Unafraid Childhood”. AssosiatedContent.com. October 27, 2006.

Media

Mann, Sally. “At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women”. Photo. Photokaboom.com.[http://www.photokaboom.com/images/tips/Mann_Sally_At_Twelve_resampled.jpg]

Mann, Sally. “Candy Cigarette”. Photo. Ground Glass.[http://caraphillips.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/candycigarette.jpg]

Mann, Sally. "Damaged Child". Photo. artnet.com.[http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_141091_275247_sally-mann.jpg]

Mann, Sally. “Night-blooming Cereus”. Photo. Brown University.[http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/1996-97/96-057g.html]

Mann, Sally. "Jessie At Five". Photo. Seminarprojekt:Fotografische Erkundungen zur Pädagogi.k [http://web.uni-frankfurt.de/fb04/fotobox/Gruppensites/gruppe_prof.htm]

Microcinema. "What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann." March 21, 2008. Online video clip. YouTube.