Sally Mann on : 'The Body'

I have written about Sally Mann's work plenty of times throughout my photographic life so far.  There is so much to say about all of her series of work and especially about the large format camera she uses too.  She has worked with a rage of different subjects but the most popular being her family album series'. Because I have written about her and her work so many times, I'm keeping this blog post short.

This first set of images at the top is from her 'Proud Flesh' series.  This is a moody black and white nude series of 'Larry' and his form.  Photographed using an 1850's method of collodion wet plate, creating a large-format negative image on glass, not film.

"It's almost oneiric, it's almost dreamlike the way we move; each one of us knew what we had to do and we weren't talking," Sally says.  "But there was something very quiet, very loving about the whole process - his willingness to go through it and also his encouragement of me." 

She says she's like the opposite of a lot of photographers because she doesn't like everything to be in focus, she wants it out of focus and wants it to be mysterious.  This series 'Proud Flesh' is great for that because there is a milky light and shadow playing across her husbands body.  She says she was showing a love story between her and her husband, not because of the illness he had.
I think the images are very interesting, especially being wet plate collodion, because like she says, the effect on the glass is very mysterious and extraordinary. I like the look of these as nude images and I think she works really well with the human body as a form.  She has a way of making it look so peaceful and calm.

 _______________________________________________________________

The rest of the images on the blog post are of her family from the series 'Intermediate Family' and 'Family Pictures'.  She had taken all of these images at her home over the years and then had an exhibition held for all of them - not knowing the media attraction she was going to have with them.  The photographs are mainly of her three children, Emmet, Jessie and Virginia.  To her they were maternal photographs of her children but to others they were of child pornography.   This series 'Intermediate Family' shows us situations that happen throughout childhood. Mann chose to explore the concept of childhood and 'growing up' using sensual and reality.  

In most of the images the children appear nude or partially nude. In some images where she has the 'child' in full frontal nude some people have commented on there being a huge difference between the gender, but they caused a lot of controversy, and many chose to ignore the images rather than read titles and understand from her point of view. I personally agree with some of the controversy about these images and agree that all of them could be taken out of context by first glances, but I think it is a beautiful series and when I start to think about my childhood, certain image remind me of my own, Sally had only shown reality, but most viewers think and speak too soon. 

I like that within this series, and although it is capturing her own children's childhood, she also lets them have their own voice in the images, you can definitely tell that it shows each of their own personalities in the images.  I think some of her images can be said to be too much to the public eye and they do not like to link the child pornography into it, but if you jus think about the images themselves, I think Sally Mann definitely has a great technique of capturing the 'body' and can show this through emotion and reality. I have included quite a few of her images in the blog post as I think you really get the whole picture when seeing more of the series.

These three bottom images are lovely, I have actually written a short essay on Sally Mann's issues about the child nude controversy before and agree and disagree to many things said about her work, but these three images are just beautiful.  Ironically, I had to discuss the image to the left of Larry, her husband from 'Proud Flesh' series in my Interview to get into University. I think the picture quality is great and the way the lighting has been used for all three looks stunning.  The positioning and thought behind each image is there and she knows how to take a good photograph.

Overall, the way Sally Mann captures the body and pays so much attention to the human form, for me is inspiring. I would like to take away some thoughts from her works and put them into my own, When I photograph the body for this project, wherever my ideas take me, I need to pay attention to how the body moves and how the light will fall.