Discussing Sally Mann...

[chrisofwlp]

"I'm not a fan of hers or Meatyard; and haven't accepted snapshots as fine art"

I was under the impression that nearly all of Sally Mans work was done with an 11X14 wet plate camera.

 

[jstraw]

I don't care whether or not you like her work but when you dismiss her work as "snapshots" those of us that appreciate her work as far more than that, might wish to examine that dismissal.

 

[SuzanneR]

Whatever the heck happened to being allowed not to like something anymore? It's not permitted? Sorry - I didn't get the handout. Neither Sally Mann's kid photos - nor Mr. Sturges' stuff really do anything for me. The common thread is that they both seem far too 'personal' for me to enter into a dialogue with. Both, of course, in different ways.

Precisely because they are so 'personal', they resonate with me. Different strokes... I suppose.

Though... Sturges doesn't do it for me either. Not personal enough, somehow, and a little too much about looking and fantasizing about beautiful women.

 

[Sparky]

Thanks for piping in, Suzanne - well, not so much that you concur with me (if only a bit) re: sturges... though I think it would be great to have some female feedback on sturges also. Let me ask you... do you feel the women's bodies represented in sturges' work are in anyway 'sexualized'? I think they are very much about voyeurism and taboo. But hey -that's me.

 

[Sparky]

J - I KNOW that my oblique commentary on your exchange with another isn't really my business.... but I'm wondering why you care whether or not someone dismisses them as such. And - are there other artists with whom you might not have the same reaction, but who you admire equally?

I don't care whether or not you like her work but when you dismiss her work as "snapshots" those of us that appreciate her work as far more than that, might wish to examine that dismissal.

 

[catem]

But they're too emotionally close - (mann i mean) to be art.

Goodness - what a statement! That caught me up short, I will now return to read the rest of the thread!

FWIW Suzanne's initial post has pretty much summed up my own views - There is only one photograph of hers I've seen that makes me uncomfortable & that is the one called 'Dirty Jessie'.

It is amazing to me that Sally Mann's work as a whole has ever been considered 'taboo' let alone seriously controversial. At least the art world has largely (entirely?) come to accept it.

That doesn't mean that you have to like every single shot, or that her work doesn't impel you to think through the relationship of photographer/photographed, especially with regard to intimate relationships.

I'm very interested in her new work around 'death' - more the subject and the way she has chosen to explore it than the technical processes she uses.

(p.s. and the posted photograph by Emmet Gowin is simply beautiful......thanks for reminding me of it)

 

[doughowk]

Snapshot-Syle

Do a Google search for Snapshot-style & you'll find some interesting articles such as Snapshot photography's subjective objectivity that includes statements like "ultimately what separates diarists from other photographers is their mania, their obsession for capturing each microscopic flicker of emotional resonance illuminating their own lives." and "in these incursions into private emotional lives, lurks diaristic photography's power." or "today's diaristic photography is miles away from where it was twenty-five years ago, when Goldin used her camera to hunt authentic moments of emotional intensity." Is Sally Mann a "diaristic" photographer even as she changes formats from 35mm thru 8X10 to wet-plate collodian?

 

[SuzanneR]

Thanks for piping in, Suzanne - well, not so much that you concur with me (if only a bit) re: sturges... though I think it would be great to have some female feedback on sturges also. Let me ask you... do you feel the women's bodies represented in sturges' work are in anyway 'sexualized'? I think they are very much about voyeurism and taboo. But hey -that's me.

Sturges, it seems to me, is about the physical... both his subjects and his prints. He's making beautiful photographs of drop dead beautiful women, crafting drop dead gorgeous prints, but it's all about a physical surface that the viewer will desire... to touch it and feel it physically. Ultimately, I find the work shallow, and once you get past the physical beauty...well, there's not much else there, really.

Mann, I think, digs deeper into the inner world of her children and family, and there's just more "there" in her photographs. And Doug, perhaps she is a diarist... "Immediate Family" is certainly autobiographical, but she's not really employing the "snapshot" aesthetic described in the piece. Her photographs are very deliberate, where I think the snapshot aesthetic strives to be deliberately haphazard. Good read, btw, thanks for the link, Doug.

 

[Amund]

Sturges, it seems to me, is about the physical... both his subjects and his prints. He's making beautiful photographs of drop dead beautiful women, crafting drop dead gorgeous prints, but it's all about a physical surface that the viewer will desire... to touch it and feel it physically. Ultimately, I find the work shallow, and once you get past the physical beauty...well, there's not much else there, really.

Huh, is this a different Sturges? At least in the two books I have it`s not all about beautiful women, as an example "The last Day of Summer" there is 58 photographs, 30 of mostly fully clothed people, quite a few with adults and boys too...

I don`t find Jocks work shallow at all..

I may be biased as I email him time to time , and recieve boatloads of help and advice from him, but I think too many read too much into the nudity. It`s photographed in a naturist community, and sometimes you see nude people there, D`oh.!

 

[jstraw]

J - I KNOW that my oblique commentary on your exchange with another isn't really my business.... but I'm wondering why you care whether or not someone dismisses them as such. And - are there other artists with whom you might not have the same reaction, but who you admire equally?

I dunno. Look at the thread title. Discussing Sally Mann is what we're doing. Facile dismissals get tossed around...participation in the discussion would seem to involve examining those dismissals.

 

[bjorke]

If you saw the phenomenally-oversold crowd at Sally Mann's lecture last year in San Francisco, you know that she is not considered taboo by many but a reactionary few who seem unable to see the forest from the trees (and thus are quick, in any photo forum discussion of Mann I've ever seen, to drag out poor Jock Sturges and use the combined stacked soapboxes as a pulpit).

Rather than get caught up in whether the photos are objectionable, which I think is pointless and plays exactly into the agenda of the anti-photo and anti-art purpose of the complaints: what about the pictures?

The previous observation about Jock v Mann is pretty correct. Like Stephen Shore, Jock uses the detail of big camera with the intent of delivering what Shore calls the "heightend sense of awareness," while Mann uses the isolating depth of field and deep out-of-focus regions (and now with collodion, many stray bits of process-related "noisy" detail) (and yes Carl, the figure crossing the frame edge was intentional) to imbue her photos with a sense that they are bound to an inner voice of the photographer and a sense if immediate connection to the moment through personal experience.

IMO, the ability to express inner states and perceptions through one's chosen medium is precisely the core purpose of art. To show rather than say because not only is a picture worth a thousand words, but the best pictures say things that words alone cannot.

Both photographers are keenly aware of time. Consider the titles of both "Last Days of Summer" and "What Remains." Both life and death are embedded in time, and photography allows us to make some furtive stand against it, in a thin-as-paper way. Jock seems to seek the roses at their highest bloom, Mann seeks them a few heartbeats later, slipping just past the brink of inevitable decline.

Night-Blooming Cereus​

Sparky (given that your little nonsequitur about closeness vs art is one of the most corrosive things I've ever seen stated on APUG), is there any portraitist of note who you like? And if you say Karsh or any others of the Southworth & Hawes mode, tell me why their portraits are worthwhile, because the only ones of those I've ever really enjoyed are the ones where personality and emotional immediacy overwhelm the stiff formula.

 

[doughowk]

Seems to be a rather touchy subject so I'll try to tread lightly ;-)
If Sally Mann is a diarist, are there many diaries (visual or written) that are works of art? I'd suggest that the genre is of more interest to historians, sociologists, biographers, etc. than to readers of literature or viewers of porfolios. There are many images of humans that achieve an emotional response, eg some images by photojournalists; but I may decide to not put them in a frame & hang them on my wall. And that is my criteria for judging whether an image is a fine art print, but thats just my viewpoint.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Seems to be a rather touchy subject so I'll try to tread lightly ;-)
If Sally Mann is a diarist, are there many diaries (visual or written) that are works of art? I'd suggest that the genre is of more interest to historians, sociologists, biographers, etc. than to readers of literature or viewers of porfolios. There are many images of humans that achieve an emotional response, eg some images by photojournalists; but I may decide to not put them in a frame & hang them on my wall. And that is my criteria for judging whether an image is a fine art print, but thats just my viewpoint.

Samuel Pepys's diary is often considered one of the finest ever published because of the depth of its insight and details concerning life in 17th century England.

I wouldn't count on the idea of "frameability" as a useful criterion to determine what is art.

 

[CarlRadford]

I'd be happy to have many of the images by Mann, Gowin & Sturges on my wall and feel they deserve to be framed! I hope it would make people that viewed them think of the content and consider their response to the images in relation to their own backgrounds, values etc - but also as images of the highest quality per se!

 

[jstraw]

Seems to be a rather touchy subject so I'll try to tread lightly ;-)
If Sally Mann is a diarist, are there many diaries (visual or written) that are works of art? I'd suggest that the genre is of more interest to historians, sociologists, biographers, etc. than to readers of literature or viewers of porfolios. There are many images of humans that achieve an emotional response, eg some images by photojournalists; but I may decide to not put them in a frame & hang them on my wall. And that is my criteria for judging whether an image is a fine art print, but thats just my viewpoint.

It's only art if you'd want it on your wall?

 

[Roger Hicks]

...to drag out poor Jock Sturges and use the combined stacked soapboxes as a pulpit...

Odd no-one's tried a triple decker with Irene Ionescu (spelling from memory) whose work struck me as more Sally Mann than Sally Mann. What little of it I've seen, I prefer to Sally Mann's too.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

It's only art if you'd want it on your wall?

Sort of, yes. There's public art -- I wouldn't necessarily want to live with Guernica or much Bosch -- and there's private art, which yes, I would like on my wall, if only I had enough/big enough walls (Alma-Tadema being a prize example).

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparky]

Sparky (given that your little nonsequitur about closeness vs art is one of the most corrosive things I've ever seen stated on APUG), is there any portraitist of note who you like? And if you say Karsh or any others of the Southworth & Hawes mode, tell me why their portraits are worthwhile, because the only ones of those I've ever really enjoyed are the ones where personality and emotional immediacy overwhelm the stiff formula.

How do you mean that björke? Why do you construe it as 'corrosive'? I was suggesting that SOME of Mann's work stems from a loving familial gaze -that, to my mind, is best kept on the mantlepiece. And for that, they are wonderful.

I'm not talking about ALL of it. Just some. The pic you posted - I would NOT include in the same work. What bothers me is the child's gaze reflecting the social contract between parent and child - and everything problematic about that (for me at least).

I have no problems with certain kinds of 'closeness' - and CERTAINLY photographic portraiture SHOULD be emotionally evocative. However - this specific work, whose subject is the OFFSPRING of the author comes far too close to the realm of what I'd call the 'baby picture' or the 'graduation picture' by dint of it's subject (only). I'm talking about the kind of document that gets foisted on you by proud parents - who can see no end of profundity therein - yet the viewer is feverishly racking their brain - trying to find a means of escaping the social bind in the parent's attempt to secure 'approval'.

I think that my problem with this kind of photo is essentially political - and because it has to do with notions of 'ownership' of the subject - also with sturges - but in a more subtle way. There is a problematic dialectic (sorry for the $5 word- I needed to!) of expectation, social role and hierarchy that problematizes such images. That the photographer absolutely dominates the subject into submission. Perhaps this is similar in a way to the political contract between photographer and PAID model... however this is a very different scenario for me.

Does this make any sense? I hope it makes sense. It is perhaps a summary of why I tend to avoid portraiture. And I'm sure many DON'T have the same issues or sensitivites I do... but I hope that you can see where I'm coming from a little bit better.

 

[Sparky]

I'd be happy to have many of the images by Mann, Gowin & Sturges on my wall and feel they deserve to be framed! I hope it would make people that viewed them think of the content and consider their response to the images in relation to their own backgrounds, values etc - but also as images of the highest quality per se!

Carl - I don't think we're looking at this at this sort of level. Nobody will deny here that any of the aforementioned authors can produce a visually attractive composition or a nice silver print. Certainly - there is also the issue of commercial value influencing things...

In a book I'd read by arthur koestler (name eludes me -sorry) he discusses a female friend of his who has a small etching she discovers is a picasso - after which it is moved from the back of the bathroom door to the prized place under the main light in the entry hall. But that's a separate issue.

 

[Sparky]

Mann, I think, digs deeper into the inner world of her children and family, and there's just more "there" in her photographs. And Doug, perhaps she is a diarist... "Immediate Family" is certainly autobiographical, but she's not really employing the "snapshot" aesthetic described in the piece. Her photographs are very deliberate, where I think the snapshot aesthetic strives to be deliberately haphazard. Good read, btw, thanks for the link, Doug.

That sells me a bit more on her work involving the kids.

 

[Sparky]

I dunno. Look at the thread title. Discussing Sally Mann is what we're doing. Facile dismissals get tossed around...participation in the discussion would seem to involve examining those dismissals.

JS - thanks for the response. It's just that his comment seemed so 'bait-like' it didn't seem worthy of a response. And I was surprised that someone bothered. But I chose to pick your comment out for questioning among others because I thought it was an easy way to frame a larger question - i.e. it seems that people tend to view the validity of certain work from a surprisingly absolutist place. it's as though there is no room for individual value-judgement. But anyway...

 

[jstraw]

Sort of, yes. There's public art -- I wouldn't necessarily want to live with Guernica or much Bosch -- and there's private art, which yes, I would like on my wall, if only I had enough/big enough walls (Alma-Tadema being a prize example).

Cheers,

R.

Bosch, there you go...perfect. I sure as hell don't want it on my wall and it sure as hell is art.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Bosch, there you go...perfect. I sure as hell don't want it on my wall and it sure as hell is art.

Oh, I think it would be a hoot to have "Garden of Earthly Delights" hanging on the dining room wall. Especially when you had company over who you really didn't want to stay long.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Oh, I think it would be a hoot to have "Garden of Earthly Delights" hanging on the dining room wall. Especially when you had company over who you really didn't want to stay long.

Guys, where is your stoner ethos? I have seen plenty of people with a poster of the Garden hanging in their flats because of the cool weird little people.

 

[bjorke]

How do you mean that björke? Why do you construe it as 'corrosive'?

What you wrote:

But they're too emotionally close - (mann i mean) to be art. For me. It's impossible to distance the author from the subject enough.

Which was quoted out of context (why I said "non sequitur"). Still -- the idea that closeness disqualifies art is imo a horrible sentiment. What distinguishes art from craftsmanship (don't forget, we're discussing images here that are clearly being received as "art"), at least since the 1800's, is the idea of the artist's personal internal emotions, discoveries and realizations finding external outlet. There is no "too close."

...the photographer absolutely dominates the subject into submission.

Light on the surface is ultimately all you get. The photographer needs to confront this fact when making pictures, whether through direct action of the power of chance. Whatever your greater purpose, you own it to the work itself to do whatever you can, whether it's Mann's watery idylls or even journalism (Natchwey: "I need to make pictures that are eloquent")

BTW, Jessie Mann is on the back cover of SHOTS 95 ("Books-Words"), and inside too. So is Sam Portrera:

Dead Link Removed
Sam Portrera, March 2006​

Too close?