On Tuesday I went to see Sally Mann speak at City Arts & Lectures. I bought the ticket as a gift to my 21-year-old self, who, once a lost and lonely art school student at a giant university, really adored her but could never have afforded to see her give a presentation at the time, even if she had come all the way to bleak, rancid Syracuse New York. Consider it a late 21st birthday present.
I haven’t thought about Sally Mann in years and meanwhile, my own photography is much more haphazard than it ever was before. These days, I only take pictures with my iPhone — although, arguably, it’s the best camera I’ve ever had. However, I was intrigued to see what Sally has been up to all these years, and curious if she would talk about Immediate Family: the series of photographs that made her famous in the early 90s and rocked the art world by bringing into question whether the National Endowment of the Arts should be allowed to give grants to whomever they pleased. For those of you that don’t remember this art world scandal, Immediate Family was a series of starkly beautiful black and white photographs of Sally Mann’s children and land in Virginia. In a lot of the pictures, the kids are naked and dirty, and although they were all under the age of ten at the time, certain people had a real problem with this. She was accused of child abuse and child pornography and all manner of lascivious and immoral behavior. It was a furor that rocked the art world and the NEA.
I went by myself to the event this week, which is something I like to do when I really, really don’t want to miss a moment of something, and I was glad I did. The evening consisted of a slide show of photos from her portfolio as well as snapshots from her childhood and life as an artist. At the same time, she read from her memoirs. The idea of a photographer writing memoirs might seem juxtaposey, but in truth she is an incredibly articulate woman with a charming Virginia accent, and it was quite lovely. She read about her childhood and her infatuation with horses, the farm she grew up on in Lexington, how she met her husband and his family, and finally, how Immediate Family came to be.
This series made a huge impact on me as a fledgling artist and the photos, viewed again 20 years later, are still just as viscerally beautiful and strangely creepy. She said that she is often asked if she would do it all over again if she knew then what she later learned about how the public (or at least right wing media) would react. And she said yes, of course she would. And she also revealed that a lot of the photos — which were deconstructed to mean dark, nefarious things by her critics, who searched for the symbolism and the hidden messages — were in reality just portraits of her kids in picturesque situations.
As someone who does not look for signs, symbolism or even the greater meaning of things, but believes that life is just like this, I was greatly relieved to hear an artist of her caliber say that sometimes she takes pictures simply because she likes the way the light is hitting something. That’s the thing that is so interesting about art: you have to interpret it from your own personal experience and way of seeing the world. Which makes it even more oddball that people who saw villainous intentions in her pictures pointed the finger at her for being the picture-maker. In truth, those stories were self-invented. As are most.
BTW I don’t feel comfortable stealing her photos to show you here, but I highly encourage you to check them out on her web site: sallymann.com
