Sally Mann: An American photographic master

Last week I had the fortune to happen upon “photo week” on Ovation TV. Ovation (which I had never noticed before, in the world of 1000′s of cable channels) is an arts-focused channel that rebroadcasts PBS documentaries and seems to have some original content. Photo week featured a number of documentaries about individual photographers, thematic concepts (including interesting shows on portraiture and the decisive moment), and photographic history.

Among these shows was a great documentary on Sally Mann titled, “Sally Mann: What Remains”, taken from her series of the same name. The show detailed (in Mann’s own words) how she stumbled upon her work when she photographed her young child’s bee sting (“Damaged Child”), the genesis of what would be her work for decades to come. It also showed her working; how she interacted with her subjects, what elements she responded to, how she used her camera. [In one scene, she braced her 8x10 with her head while holding the lens closed with one hand and yanked the dark slide out with the other.]

Sally Mann – Damaged Child

The documentary, What Remains is a portrait of the artist; in two hours, I felt like I knew her, her relationship with her amazingly centered and supporting husband, and her children who were certainly affected by growing up in front of the lens. Through all this, I began to get a sense of how she responds visually to her environment, how she crafts her images, and most importantly, that even famous photographers can sometimes be unsure of their direction, can suffer setbacks, and have trouble getting shooting again.

So here it is, the top 3 reasons why Sally Mann rocks the Catskills:

1. She shoots wet-plate collodion with a huge view camera.
   If you’ve ever shot large format, you know how much commitment it takes to make an image: open the case, mount the camera on an enormous tripod, mount the lens, get under a dark cloth with a lupe for focus, meter the scene (or make a good guess), stop down and close the lens, set the shutter, insert the film holder, pull the dark slide, and shoot. (And often, undoing all this afterwards).On top of this, Mann coats glass plates right before she shoots, and processes them right afterward. And I think she was shooting a 11×14″ camera, at least some of the time. Add on to this incredibly slow sensitivity and slow ancient lenses (exposures can be 5+ minutes), and you have a very methodological working process only suitable for the patient and dedicated.
   Wet-plate collodion

   The plus side of this large, slow process was what looked like beautiful 40×60″ prints.

2. She doesn’t give up, she never surrenders, she lives photography
   I’ve heard it said that the main trait that separates the genius is unrelenting tenacity. Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to be good at something (watch a very interesting video with M.G. here). 10k hrs. – 10 years at 3 hrs per day!  Mann has been shooting for much longer, and despite many setbacks, immerses herself constantly in her work. When an idea becomes exhausted, she finds new related concepts to explore. At Twelve became Immediate Family became Still Time became What Remains became Deep South.
3. There’s truth in her work
   Sally Mann doesn’t invent false realities. She’s stunningly, painfully, mercilessly honest in her image making. This fearlessness carries through to her pursuit of subject material; would you keep the remains of your dead dog for photographic purposes? She was unable to relinquish her attachment to her beloved Greyhound… yet for her, the old bones and nails and teeth are a way of manifesting her feelings and the resulting photo is a permanent connection. Her documentation of her husband Larry as he succumbs to muscular dystrophy is the same, only a magnitude more powerful. If she ever releases that work, it will be equal to anything else she’s done.

You can learn a bit about the show on the PBS website. Check it out.

If you’re interested in wet plate collodion, check out this book: Coming into Focus: A Step-by-Step Guide to Alternative Photographic Printing Processes. I own it… it’s well written, and though some bits are little out of date (the computer specs in the making a digital negative are particularly ancient), it’s quite good. If you manage to create images using this process, please let me know – the StartPhoto audience would be very interested in seeing those images.

/Curator’s Blog