Photo 1
Professor Johnson
10 May 2011
Sally Mann “It never occurred to me to leave home to make art.”(What Remains) This was just one of the many powerful statements made by Sally Mann as she explains how her fascination with photography began and followed her throughout her life. Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1951. She is still living and photographing there today. Mann has been photographing since the 1970s. She produces portraits, photos of buildings and architecture, and still life photographs. She has also begun to transition into a landscape photographer. She is best known for her photographs of her family, her three children and her husband Larry. Mann is known for her black and white wet collodion photos. Sally Mann is famous for her influential work, although her work has attracted much controversy at times, and “since her the time of her first solo exhibition, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., in 1977, she has attracted a wide audience.”(Woodward 29) There was much debate about some of Sally Mann’s work, especially when she published a collection of photographs of her children in 1990 called, “Immediate Family.” Mann’s collection included pictures of her young children topless or at times fully nude. When Mann came out with this body of work there was a outrage among the community about child pornography. Due to poor timing Mann’s work took the brunt of speculation simply because she photographed her children in the nude. Sally mentions while talking to her mother in a video that was made of her work, that as a child she never wore clothes, and that her children were no different. Mann states, “I really wasn’t trying to push anyone’s buttons, I just was responding to things that appealed to me.” (What Remains) The public viewed this as a possible form of pornography, while Mann simply viewed Immediate Family as raw