Photographer Sally Mann
Despite Controversial Roots, Mann Holds Place As Top Photographer
Aug 29, 2009
The Virginia-born Sally Mann shot her first photographs in the 1960s at Putney School, but it was her later works, especially those of her children, whom she depicted in various conflicting stages of youth and adolescence, that began to generate controversy.
Edgy from the Start
Mann was initially inspired by her father's interest in photography, and from her earliest shots, including an early photo of a nude classmate, Mann was not afraid to take chances with her camera.
By the time her most memorable published collection, "Immediate Family," was released in 1990, Mann had already published two collections, "Second Sight" in 1984 and "At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women" in 1988 - a book that drew controversy for its intimate look at girls on the cusp of womanhood, but still set the stage for what was to come.
Private Lives, Public MomentsThat third book earned rave reviews from critics, who saw a freshness through the lens of Mann's camera as she continued her haunting study of childhood, this time with an honest look at her own three waif-like children, as they played in the hot Virginia sun, as they brooded, as the mulled over childhood's dreams and disappointments.
"The photographs are beautiful and strange, like a dream of childhood in the summer," wrote Janet Malcolm in the New York Review of Books. "They are not your usual pictures of the children to send to the grandparents; they are pictures to send to the Museum of Modern Art."
But it also earned criticism, including accusations of child pornography for her respectful nude portraits of her children.
But Mann wasn't deterred, and called her pieces "natural through the eyes of a mother" in a later biography about her work.
Called "one of the greatest photography books of our time" by The New Republic, Mann's works from "Immediate Family" along with earlier pieces were soon were on display at galleries nationwide, where her interesting takes on both motherhood and childhood were seen as riveting and revealing, and her sometimes playful, often charming images were not easily forgotten.
Mann's Critical Acclaim
In 2001, Mann was named America's Best Photographer by Time Magazine, which 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.”
Her Inspirations
But Mann was not the first to share such an intimate look at family through her camera.
One of Mann's early inspirations was Danville, Va.-born photographer Emmet Gowin, whose works focusing on his wife, Edith, landed him in the pages of Smithsonian Magazine. along with a Guggenheim, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and numerous national awards.
And although Mann named her firstborn son Emmett, she reportedly did not take the name from the photographer whose early works inspired Mann to echo the intimate style and revealing black and white technique, while still providing viewers with a fresh take on portrait photography.
Her work too has inspired many contemporary photographers, including collaborative contemporary photographers John Shimon and Julie Lindemann, whose intimate black and white photos reveal the people and places that make up rural Wisconsin.
Mann Today
Mann, who published her sixth book, "Deep South," in 2006, is currently using her camera to explore her husband's battle with muscular dystrophy.
She still lives in Virginia.
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