The Serendipitous Moments of Sally Mann

By Rena Silverman | Published November 30, 2010 | BlackBook magazine

Sally Manns Untitled (Self Portraits), 20062007

Four years ago, the photographer Sally Mann got on her horse and rode out into the mountains that surround her Virginia home. In the middle of what seemed like a typical ride, Sallys horse had an aneurism. Flailing and thrashing beneath her, the horse fell to the ground, knocking Sally o! his back on the way down. She lay there quietly for several minutes. Then, Hades"like, the horse rose back up, pickd up one hoof, and stomped on Sallys back just before nally falling to its death. Luckily, Sally regained consciousness in time to pull herself to safety, but the accident resulted in a crushed vertebra. Everyone thought I was dead, said Sally in a phone interview from her home in Lexington, Virginia. For Sally, horseback riding is just a normal part of daily life on her 425"acre farm, which rests at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. About half my time is spent on a horse, she said. The other half in the darkroom. But after the accident, Sally Mann could neither ride nor print. The photographer, once able to roam her property unbothered by the weight of her thirty"pound tripod, was now conned to bed with several months of recovery ahead.

There was one thing she could do, however, which was take photographs. But only from a xed position at bedside. Her 8x10 view camera was too heavy to move around. So, she propped up the camera on a side table, spread out her nineteenth"century technology #black glass plates and collodion$, and pointed the lens at herself, a rare move for an artist who has published only two self"portraits in the last thirty years. The resulting images, which have been grouped into two separate grids, serve as the bookends to a current exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts called, Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit. The self"portraits read like a storyboard. All of the frames show di!erent parts of the photographers face. They are equal in length, height, color, and material, but vary in angle, exposure, and chemical chance #a unique result of Sallys process$. Sally created these images using the nineteenth"century ambrotype process, which builds a positive image on a sheet of glass #in this case, black glass$ using sticky, wet"plate collodion. One side of the glass plate is covered with a thin layer of collodion before it is dipped into a solution of silver nitrate. The plate must be exposed in the camera while wet, which gives the photographer a small window of time to take the picture, depending on the amount of light available. The plate is then immediately developed and xed on site. One of Sallys self"portraits looks almost mummy"like. In it, a scraggly hachure separates Sallys nose from her skin, which looks almost like a torn piece of esh. In a certain sense they really are a meditation on mortality, said Sally while she poured her co!ee. Theres almost a dematerialization as you look at them. John B. Ravenal of the Virginia Museum organized the exhibition thematically, focusing on the body and its decay. Besides the recent ambrotypes, the show also includes the photographers earlier works, including Polaroids and color photographs. What you see when you enter, vibrant faces of the Mann family children, di!ers greatly from what you see when you leave, deteriorating skin exaggerated by the collodion e!ect. Sally calls this a Dorian Grey"like progression. The images of Sallys kids do not come from her famous 1992 series Immediate Family. #You may recall this collection, one that I would describe as a group of impeccable prints, but that others unfortunately described as child pornography. Once released, this series sold millions of copies, unfortunately to the wrong audience: a lot of pedafyles. Then, the series got caught between the arguments of religious and rightwinged conspirators, many of whom deemed her work%together with that of
THE SERENDIPIDOUS MOMENTS OF SALLY MANN! 2

Robert Mapplethorpes and Karen Finleys%obsene. It is true that Sallys children are nude in many of the images, but it is my rm opinion that this collection is not pornography. Nobody ever bothered Edvard Munch for painting every contour of the naked Sick Child.$ But, the Virginia Museum #or Mrs. Mann, both parties declined to explain further$ kept Immediate Family entirely out of the exhibition. Instead, curators focused on Family Color, which is essentially Immediate Family in color. In Orange Virginia, daughter Virginia Mann lies belly up, supported by a single, grown"up arm. Her body, marked by a small temporary tattoo of a heart on her chest, oats into the glow of the orange light against a dark, black background. When asked about her decision to shoot in color, Sally said she did not enjoy the process. Very few photographers are able to print their own color images, while blackand"white photographs can be easily printed in a darkroom. Im such a control freak, she said. I like making my own prints. As giant, color images continue to grow and dominate photography galleries, this is one thing that makes Sally di!erent from her contemporaries. Most photographers these days shoot in color, almost all send their images out to a lab or color printer. Additionally, many photographers, even those who traditionally used large"format cameras #like Sallys 8x10$ are switching to digital. Gregory Crewdson and Stephen Shore are just some of the big names who have already gone to the other side. When asked if she would ever make the switch, Sally replied with an quick No. For her, the digital camera doesnt have any spirit. Sally says in fact that the darkroom is more important to her process than the camera. I love printing, I just love it, she said, adding that she is a better printer than photographer. Just around the corner from the colorful Orange Virginia, is Sallys black"and"white image of her same daughter, Virginia #42, from the 2003 series What Remains. In this 50x40"inch collodion close"up, Virginias face is specked with childlike freckles that weave in and out of focus between languorous cupid"bow lips at the bottom of the frame, while two half"moons form eyes at the top. In his documentary, What Remains: the Life and Work of Sa!y Mann #2005$, Steven Cantor asked Sally about the title of this series #What Remains$. Because I love my family I make the images I do, she said.

COPYRIGHT RENA SILVERMAN, 2010 - 2014. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Nothing proves this more than the images that make up Sallys Proud Flesh #2009$, also included in the exhibition. For this series, originally shown at the Gagosian Gallery, New York in 2009, Sally used her husband Larry Mann as the subject, a play on the traditional gender role of muse. Larry Mann su!ers from Muscular Dystrophy, a slow, degenerative disease of the muscles. Many of the images capture that essence, but not by physical example of say, here is a bad leg. Instead, photographic accidents of leaked chemistry morph Larrys esh and carry it out of the two"dimensional surface to which photography is typically bound. Memorys Truth, 2008 features Larrys single arm ascending from a darkness of blur and chemistry. The arm is wrapped in veins and oats down onto a keyboard of knuckles, which rests atop a table or oor. Also on view are photographs from Last Measure, a series sparked by an incident Sally describes in Cantors documentary. In 2001, Sally was alone in her home when a convicted sex o!ender shot himself to death on her property. After the body was removed, Sally wandered over to the land where he had died and found a small pool of blood. She poked at it with a stick, watching as she said, the earth just took a sip of his blood. A few months later, Sally started asking herself, What does the earth do to a dead body? What does a dead body do the earth? Sally took these questions to the Civil War battleelds where she focused on capturing land that was both dreamily beautiful and haunted by the pain of slavery and racism. The results are extraordinary landscapes that t in with the exhibitions theme of the body. Chemical leaks look like anatomical textures, large trees look like the alveoli of lungs, the sky%blackened by collodion%looks like a sonogram of a womans womb. Both Flesh and Spirit have been rising from the depths of Sally Manns work for some time now. Her chosen nineteenth"century, wet"plate method is dualistic in nature. On the one hand, there is no grain, which potentially creates a crystal clear image. On the other hand, the sticky, time"sensitive chemistry used to process that image, can be recipe for a messy result. But, unlike photographers from the nineteenth century who could not wait to discover an easier technology, Sally Mann does not mind the mess. In fact, she kind of likes it. She prides herself on what she calls, serendipitous moments, where light leaks, dripping chemistry, or other such accidents occur in her photographic process, even if it means lost content.

THE SERENDIPIDOUS MOMENTS OF SALLY MANN!

The Flesh and the Spirit only marks one continued line of growth for Sally Mann, now 59, who has overcome the impact of angry right"wing politicians, loud religious preachers, and spinal injury from the throes of a horses death. Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit, is on view at the VMFA through Jan 23, 2011.

COPYRIGHT RENA SILVERMAN, 2010 - 2014. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.