I went last week to the Photographers Gallery to see Sally Mann exhibition. A photographic series from throughout her long career, intimate portraits of her three young children and Virginia landscapes.
Talking about technique, I liked the series call Faces, where photographs are ghostly lit and covered with marks and drip trails. She used old antique cameras and specially processed.
The Family and the Land is beautiful. This exhibition is controversial in its portrayals of children and death. I think some of the photos were intimate or provocative, but once I looked at them longer, I saw beauty and innocence. Sally Mann as a mother and these are her children captured those intimate moments between them. Like any mother, she was taking these photos as an homage to her children, a celebration of their shared features and perfection, and it was something they collaborated on.
Candy Cigarette, 1989, from Immediate Family © Sally Mann.
What Reminds is also part of this exhibition. It was strangely beautiful. Again, its simple and natural - for Mann, when we die, we disappear and nothing is left but nature. Her we have another taboo, what she shows us is what really remains here. It seems that in New York it was a bit controversial, as they cancelled the exhibition at the last minute…
You can still visit it before 19th September.
