Sally Mann

[ann]

To the Atlanta area people. Sally Mann is in town and will be at the Atlanta historical center tonight ( may20) at 7

A big $10 for what should be an interesting talk

Ann

 

[doughowk]

The excerpts I've read suggest she is also a good writer.
Any tour dates closer to N. Florida?

 

[RalphLambrecht]

The excerpts I've read suggest she is also a good writer.
Any tour dates closer to N. Florida?

I would go to anywhere in Florida to see and listen to her too.

 

[Shawn Rahman]

The excerpts I've read suggest she is also a good writer.

Agreed. Her memoir is very well written, in a truly unique and vibrant literary voice. It took me a long time to warm up to her post-Immediate Family work, but everything about her dedication to her family and art is truly impressive.

 

[ann]

She was delightful , funny and very straight forward

Her graduate work was creative writing but selling poets wasn't going to put food on the table so she became a working photographer

If you have the chance rent or buy the movie "what remains". Be sure to watch the extras as they will give you the flavor of the woman's heart and soul

 

[SuzanneR]

Her memoir is excellent, rich in detail about her life and ancestors, well worth the read. The book sprang from a series of lectures she gave at Harvard three or four years ago, bummed I wasn't able to go to them.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/03...rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2079475242&pf_rd_i=desktop

 

[TenSpeed]

I would go to anywhere in Florida to see and listen to her too.

same here

 

[Richard Man]

I just went to Mrs. Sally Mann speaking in San Francisco. Very gracious and romantic.

During signing, I asked her if there is any truth that she started using a 8x10 because of lack of electricity etc. in the farm, and she said no, although it would make a good story

 

[blansky]

In case anyone is interested here is a recent interview on Charlie Rose:

http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60569399

 

[DREW WILEY]

I watched most of the Rose interview, at least until he drifted off into the predictable irrelevant film vs digi questions. She's a brilliant photographer and printmaker, and apparently has some digs with elbow room, but over the years I can't help but shake my head and say to
myself concerning people who do this kind of work with their kids, "what the hell were they thinking?" There are sickos and pyschos everywhere these days, urban and rural, and the idea of plastering one's kids into public view in this manner seems extremely irresponsible, "free spirit" artist or not.

 

[blansky]

I watched most of the Rose interview, at least until he drifted off into the predictable irrelevant film vs digi questions. She's a brilliant photographer and printmaker, and apparently has some digs with elbow room, but over the years I can't help but shake my head and say to
myself concerning people who do this kind of work with their kids, "what the hell were they thinking?" There are sickos and pyschos everywhere these days, urban and rural, and the idea of plastering one's kids into public view in this manner seems extremely irresponsible, "free spirit" artist or not.

Well it was 25 years ago. But I get your point. She got off fairly easily being a woman. The men that have done it, had a few court battles like Jock Sturges. Personally I love the pictures, and what people do with our pictures is an interesting debate. Sears catalog underwear ads, National Geographic African stuff was all jerk off bait. So are the photographers responsible for what people do with the pictures?

The US perversion of love of killing vs acceptance of sexuality/nudity is rather profound and disturbing and nudity in sane countries is far less of an issue. People losing their kids for innocent bathtub pictures is so bizarre that it's beyond reason.

Bottom line is art is supposed to elicit a response.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The sickos patrol playgrounds like sharks. Near here, at the UCB grad student housing, the parents actually form circles around the kids because the weirdos are always probing the defenses. I actually witnessed a child abduction once. We were walking near a playground one
evening when someone grabbed a girl and tried to pull her into the car right across the street from a freeway on-ramp. We weren't close enough to actually intervene in time, but my wife and I started yelling like heck and distracted the driver long enough for the girl to pull free. Oddly, the culprit was a well-dressed woman in a nice car, who was undoubtedly intending to sell the girl. There are human traffickers in all our large cities here. Hundreds of registered offenders are in this town, some living close to schools, and even larger numbers are exported to rural neighborhoods around the state, often in proximity to kids. People can define "art" however they wish, and there is no question that Mann's pictures can be masterpieces; but I still find that genre utterly irresponsible. I've lived long enough to see plenty of "free spirits" lose a gamble themselves, at the expense of their own life.

 

[blansky]

I'm a firm believer that women and children should wear burkas.

Then we wouldn't have all these problems.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Sorry, but I've been in Berkeley way too long. Seen it all. I was never a hippie, but did arrive in town right around that Summer of "Love"
fiasco. Saw how runaways kids were snatched up by the pimps, pushers, and porno entrepreneurs. Personally know some of the very lucky
few survivors of both Jonestown and the Manson Family, and numerous other potentially lethal cults of that era. I don't think any of us would want to get into the heads of some of these sickos, but let's just say they look at things in some strange ways we do not as photographers, and using innocent kids as art might equate to fishing chum for them. Why advertise? I've also owned and rented rural properties, and it's no safer out there. Yeah, I was raised like a wild Indian myself, and free to risk my neck mtn climbing, getting chased by bulls, and crawling through caves and down rapids. But at least I had responsible parents who warned their kids about weirdos. Some
of these exceptional artists seem to have a screw missing here and there. Maybe that comes with the territory. Mann has been discussed
plenty elsewhere. In terms of work, that opalescent 8x10 groundglass was her best match. I don't think her color work, though interesting,
comes up to the same level, nor her smaller format experiments. And as far as public nudity goes, seeing three motheaten 60-something
hippies walking down the street here arm in arm stark nekkid does not make me think of a burka, but an effective flea bomb.

 

[SuzanneR]

The sickos patrol playgrounds like sharks. Near here, at the UCB grad student housing, the parents actually form circles around the kids because the weirdos are always probing the defenses. I actually witnessed a child abduction once. We were walking near a playground one
evening when someone grabbed a girl and tried to pull her into the car right across the street from a freeway on-ramp. We weren't close enough to actually intervene in time, but my wife and I started yelling like heck and distracted the driver long enough for the girl to pull free. Oddly, the culprit was a well-dressed woman in a nice car, who was undoubtedly intending to sell the girl. There are human traffickers in all our large cities here. Hundreds of registered offenders are in this town, some living close to schools, and even larger numbers are exported to rural neighborhoods around the state, often in proximity to kids. People can define "art" however they wish, and there is no question that Mann's pictures can be masterpieces; but I still find that genre utterly irresponsible. I've lived long enough to see plenty of "free spirits" lose a gamble themselves, at the expense of their own life.

This kind of thinking stifles art making, and you know... just living your life.

There are plenty of "sex offenders" who are on the lists because they were caught, say having sex in the school gym when they were in high school or some such. Those lists are, for the most part, pretty useless. That abduction you witnessed was statistically more likely to be a custody dispute than some stranger abducting a child for sex. That's not to suggest there aren't plenty of sick folks out there or that human traffiking doesn't happen, but Mann made those pictures, and her children made it to adulthood relatively unscathed. Would be a real shame if she hadn't bothered for fear of the boogie man, and just made pictures of flowers or something boring like that. (Of course, the pedophiles might fetishize those pictures, too.)

 

[blansky]

The interesting thing about the Mann children is not the nudity, or the pictures, it's merely the reaction of stupid people to the pictures.

It's like the phony McMartin School molestation. The children were never molested or traumatized. UNTIL the idiots and the "professionals" got a hold of them. Then they were forced to believe sick shit had happened to them. THEN they were traumatized.

And the Jock Sturges pictures I believe were from Nudist/naturalist resorts and those people had no problems with nudity to begin with.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Stupid people, as you call them, do stalk kids. And yes, they might make a fetish out of someone in a photograph or otherwise in public view, just like how certain stalkers focus on celebrities. These aren't games, esp in our modern world of internet imagery. It's happening all the time. And it was rife twenty years ago. And sorry, Suzanne... I know what an abduction is, and a ten year old Hispanic girl, whose family lived on that very street, being pulled into a car screaming by a total blonde stranger isn't some custody thing. It's life and death. And even if it was about custody, those kind of scenarios can end very badly. Would you gamble with you own kids for the sake of "art"? I find the whole genre incredibly naive. That simply isn't the kind of world we live in. Yes there have been nonsensical witch hunts like down in Bakersfield awhile back. But there have also been teenage girls locked up as slaves right up the street, who burned to death when all the smoke alarms were deliberately removed by the slumlord/trafficker, which incidentally, got away with only six years in prison and is still a multimillionaire. Maybe some judge is a little richer too in the process. And there are traffickers in adjacent neighborhoods who have executed local businessmen for reporting them. Underage prostitution is in plain view every day in some neighborhoods, namely those which are very unsafe in several categories. I'm sick of "artistes" who somehow think they can beat the odds. Some do. Some don't.

 

[SuzanneR]

Well, I guess no one should never make pictures of their kids, artful or not because there are criminals out there.

 

[removedacct1]

This kind of thinking stifles art making, and you know... just living your life.

Thank you, Suzanne, for speaking sense.

 

[removedacct1]

Stupid people, as you call them, do stalk kids. And yes, they might make a fetish out of someone in a photograph or otherwise in public view, just like how certain stalkers focus on celebrities.

I think it is outrageous and irresponsible to even suggest that Sally Mann has in some way contributed to child abduction and sex abuse problems. You must see monsters everywhere you look. How tragic to live this way.

 

[DREW WILEY]

More likely there is an "artiste" culture that cultivates a make-believe world view, and is inevitable on any forum like this one. Seen it my
whole life. Kinda the macho thing: my "art" makes it worth it. Same attitude I seen with toxic chemicals in art media. Lots of those folks are
either dead or miserable prematurely. I'd get the same flack around here by everyone who thinks they are an artiste because they have green
hair and a nose ring. Seen it all, all too often. Mind games.

 

[Richard Man]

The fact that her book, which is 20+ years old, still brings out a multi-page thread whenever her name is mentioned, demonstrates the power of her work.

 

[doughowk]

As the FBI agent told Sally Mann, some people would get turned on by door knobs. No more erotic pictures of door knobs, please, for the sake of the children.

 

[blansky]

More likely there is an "artiste" culture that cultivates a make-believe world view, and is inevitable on any forum like this one. Seen it my
whole life. Kinda the macho thing: my "art" makes it worth it. Same attitude I seen with toxic chemicals in art media. Lots of those folks are
either dead or miserable prematurely. I'd get the same flack around here by everyone who thinks they are an artiste because they have green
hair and a nose ring. Seen it all, all too often. Mind games.

I get your concerns on some of this stuff and I know you're serious but I think we have to at some point push the bogeyman to the back of our heads and live life and celebrate.

We can't cure the world or human nature.

But we are responsible to ourselves to not get bogged down in it. Because IT will destroy us before the other stuff does.

And the green hair does grow out and the nose ring hole will heal with just a tiny reminder that we were young once.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I never had green hair or a nose ring... that's long before my time. I did buy a lot of playboy magazines back when store clerks weren't afraid to sell to minors. Does that count as freaky?