The Family and the Land- Sally Mann

Sally Mann’s photographic exhibition- her first in the UK- merges the themes of natural life, death and progressive time through the use of her duteous children, dramatic landscape and decomposing corpses.

The show begins with her ‘Immediate Family’ series (1990-1996) consisting of close-up, black and white portraits of her three children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia captured over a period of 10 years. Often they are placed in close proximity to the lens, which disguises the sweetness of their faces. Instead they become blurry and stone-like in an almost statuesque quality however some endearing elements like Virginia’s weighty freckles, manage to open up a sense of tangibility.

The juvenile title of each photo echoes those found in story books: ‘One Big Snake’, ‘The Aligator’s Approach’ and ‘The Perfect Tomato’ yet Mann’s works exude none of this expected excitement and anticipation. In fact strangely enough, despite being so close to evidence of childhood, her photos seem haunting and deathly. The children neither smile, nor in fact make any suggestion that they are indeed young. In their structured poses there’s a strange adult-like quality, as if Mann has deliberately positioned them so as to remove that genuine innocence and unpredictability one would expect from children impatiently waiting to be photographed.

Mann’s photos are blotchy and marked in places resembling those buried in the back pages of an old album; an aforethought result of Mann’s wet-plate collodition process. This complex technique allows photographic negatives to be produced using a glass plate collodition which forms an emulsion. The plate is then sensitised in a silver nitrate solution and exposed to light whilst still wet, resulting in dust and dirt seeping into the surface. This effect adds to the timeless nature of her works that look archaic and vintage in their scuffed quality.

Upstairs we’re invited to watch a film directed by Steven Cantor directly addressing Sally, her life, and the story behind her works. Contrary to the conventional nature of most artist documentaries, we see Sally walking her dog in her beautiful homeland of Virginia, feeding her goat, horse riding and playing with her children. There is absolutely no pretentiousness to this artist- and the film’s simplicity compliments that found in her art.

In the second stage of her work ‘Deep South’ (1996-8) Mann’s children play less of a major role as she becomes preoccupied with landscape and the effects the American Civil War had upon it. For example we see a ‘Scarred Tree’ and ‘Swamp Bones’, the former’s bark slashed across it’s middle, and the latter a misty graveyard of wild tree roots resembling twisted skeletons. Mann’s exhibit continues to become darker in mood as you walk into the final room, so much so that we are greeted with a warning before we step in: ‘Some visitors may find the photographs in the next room challenging’.

Having been lulled into the exhibit by promises of youth and energy, we are now halted wondering whether to enter this final room. The next daunting series called ‘What Remains’ 2001, shows photographs of decomposing corpses placed against the ground and seeming to absorb into the land. In one, an old man lies face down, the skin on his back bunched and gathered to resemble thick, aged tree bark, and another shows the light illuminating the blonde hair of a young boy, whose face has thankfully been blurred out. It is here that we start to see connections throughout Mann’s work and realise how effortlessly her exhibition has progressed from birth to death in only three small rooms. The transition between the two never becomes overly apparent and therefore cleverly mimicks the journey of life.

Sally Mann, The Photographer’s Gallery, 18 June-19 September 2010

© Stephanie Wollenberg