Photostaff are off to London to see the Sally Mann and Wolfgang Tillsman shows. Reviews to follow...
18 June - 19 September 2010
EXHIBITION AT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS GALLERY NOW OPEN AND RUNS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 19. 2010
The work of American photographer Sally Mann is deeply rooted in both her family, and the landscape she lives and works in. This exhibition, her first solo-show in the UK, draws on several powerful photographic series from throughout her long career that reflect these influences.
Sally Mann (b.1951, USA) first came to prominence for Immediate Family (1984 – 94), a series of intimate and revealing portraits of her three young children Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. Taken over ten years, Mann depicts them playing and acting to camera in and around their homestead in Virginia. Capturing their childhood in all its rawness and innocence, both this and the later series Faces were born out of a collaborative process between mother and child.
Changing focus to the landscape close to her home, the series Deep South (1996 – 98) draws on significant locations from the American Civil War. The photographs are ghostly lit and covered with delicate marks and drip trails – a result of using antique cameras and processes which Mann relishes – that imbue them with a sense of time suspended.
The most recent series in the exhibition, What Remains (2000-04), brings together both of the earlier strands. Facing us are beautifully realised portraits of decomposing bodies returning to the land, photographs taken at a research facility in Tennesse. Dealing directly with the social taboo of death, Mann treats this subject with sensitivity, encouraging us to reflect on our own mortality and place within nature’s order.
The Family and the Land: Sally Mann at The Photographers’ Gallery is an edited version of a touring exhibition, conceived by Sally Mann in collaboration with Hasse Persson, Director, Borås Museum of Modern Art, Sweden.
Link to Guardian Web site review of show
Sally Mann (b.1951, USA) first came to prominence for Immediate Family (1984 – 94), a series of intimate and revealing portraits of her three young children Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. Taken over ten years, Mann depicts them playing and acting to camera in and around their homestead in Virginia. Capturing their childhood in all its rawness and innocence, both this and the later series Faces were born out of a collaborative process between mother and child.
Changing focus to the landscape close to her home, the series Deep South (1996 – 98) draws on significant locations from the American Civil War. The photographs are ghostly lit and covered with delicate marks and drip trails – a result of using antique cameras and processes which Mann relishes – that imbue them with a sense of time suspended.
The most recent series in the exhibition, What Remains (2000-04), brings together both of the earlier strands. Facing us are beautifully realised portraits of decomposing bodies returning to the land, photographs taken at a research facility in Tennesse. Dealing directly with the social taboo of death, Mann treats this subject with sensitivity, encouraging us to reflect on our own mortality and place within nature’s order.
The Family and the Land: Sally Mann at The Photographers’ Gallery is an edited version of a touring exhibition, conceived by Sally Mann in collaboration with Hasse Persson, Director, Borås Museum of Modern Art, Sweden.
Link to Guardian Web site review of show
The Photo Team went on an away-day to London last week and of course we went along to the show at the Photographers Gallery [free entry].
ReplyDeleteThe show is shown over two floors of the Gallery and includes work from the Immediate Family series as well as subsequent landscapes and images of dead bodies.
The show wasn't too busy and there was plenty of time to take in the images, in Charlie's case look longingly at various expensive books in the bookshop. The work is beautifully printed, especially the family images on the second floor. A number of the images on show we hadn't seen before despite having a copy of the book. There is a great spiritual quality to many of the photographs; they have a theatrical, emotional and sensual quality that don't always make for easy viewing as many of the images are of children and others of corpses. But it is that 'difficult' quality that makes the work so rewarding and interesting, you find yourself questioning yourself as much as you question the work itself.
Go to see this unique and important show of photographs with an open mind and you won't be disappointed, Mann shows us a unique vision of the world.