Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rob C on November 10, 2017, 03:05:02 pm
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I've admired her work for quite a while, though I have to admit that, as father of a daughter, I am torn betwixt and between emotions about what she, Sally, has shot.
On the one hand I think the photos are amazing and so perceptive - or should the word really be manipulative or even exploitative?
http://sallymann.com/
Rob
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On the one hand I think the photos are amazing and so perceptive - or should the word really be manipulative or even exploitative?
Nothing if not provocative. Superbly realized.
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Ms. Mann walks a fine line, I think, in her work with her kids. But she does it with skill. Reading her autobio gives good insight into what she’s on about with those photos. She’s an excellent writer!
-Dave-
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Ms. Mann walks a fine line, I think, in her work with her kids. But she does it with skill. Reading her autobio gives good insight into what she’s on about with those photos. She’s an excellent writer!
-Dave-
Dave, is there a monograph that covers both her pictures and writing? I'd be interested in adding it to the little collection.
I had another attempt at my Annie L giant last night, but do wish I had seen it open before buying. It just disappointed me so: all about her famly, of which I care nothing, and her even less amazing life with her essayist friend. It was made at the time of the good bio "Life through a Lens" by her sister, which I saw on tv and had imagined the book, discussed in the film, would be similar in scope, covering the Stones tour etc, but it ended up being mainly happy snaps and of a few politicians with the token muso thrown in to silence the critics like myself. Obviously didn't work.
Rob
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Ms. Mann walks a fine line, I think, in her work with her kids. But she does it with skill. Reading her autobio gives good insight into what she’s on about with those photos. She’s an excellent writer!
-Dave-
I agree completely. So I would go with amazing and so perceptive
-Eric
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I agree completely. So I would go with -Eric
Learned - relearned? - another old lesson today: took the Nikon along for lunch - at last, and it turned out to be a local fiesta. I found another lovely face (fake, of course) on a stall, and shot her a couple of times. As I never chimp unless in cases of extremis - I trust Matrix to have done the right thing by us three. Shall see later on. Nice that the 1.8/50mm G focuses as close as it does, as I was on the FF body for a change.
I'm getting tempted by the 85mm G for use on the cut-frame Nikon, but have resisted so far. I believe it fails to focus particularly close, and as I try to eliminate much most of the time, that could matter. I like to frame in the viewfinder...
But not to hijack my own thread, Sally does have a great sense of moment. I wonder if she and H-CB could have got along?
Rob
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Hi Rob, I suspect the two of them would have gotten along famously. Both understood that looking is everything.
Here's a shot from a group of seven I did last week in my retirement community with the 85G. I used one shoot-through umbrella, a reflector camera right, and popped a second light off the ceiling behind me for fill. The lens was on my D800 at f/5.6, and the frame's not cropped at all. So you see that the lens will focus fairly closely. It's just about perfect for headshots like this one.
(I don't do this kind of thing for groups that can afford a local pro, but when they can't, I work inexpensively -- for free)
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Hi Rob, I suspect the two of them would have gotten along famously. Both understood that looking is everything.
Here's a shot from a group of seven I did last week in my retirement community with the 85G. I used one shoot-through umbrella, a reflector camera right, and popped a second light off the ceiling behind me for fill. The lens was on my D800 at f/5.6, and the frame's not cropped at all. So you see that the lens will focus fairly closely. It's just about perfect for headshots like this one.
(I don't do this kind of thing for groups that can afford a local pro, but when they can't, I work inexpensively -- for free)
As that's uncropped, then cutting a third off should make it look like it would used on cut-frame format at that distance. Not too restricing at all, then; that's nice to know, thanks.
Rob
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Dave, is there a monograph that covers both her pictures and writing? I'd be interested in adding it to the little collection.
Mann’s autobiography doesn’t have many photos, and those it has are snaps rather than her work. But it’s such a good book!
-Dave-
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Mann’s autobiography doesn’t have many photos, and those it has are snaps rather than her work. But it’s such a good book!
-Dave-
I agree.
-Eric
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Spent the past few hours with Dr Google. There's no need to buy the book: Sally M has written so much about family, fears and regrets (?) - questions to herself about those images that I get the picture very clearly in my own head. She and her husband sure paid their dues with the psycho stalker... those people (stalkers/molesters) should be put to sleep the long sleep.
But we are left none the wiser. In fact, I question whether there's actually more to understand: she shot what was to hand - as many of us have to do or just not shoot at all - and was blessed with a most photogenic troupe of characters with whom to play. The big one, the one I shall never know, is this: does a mother have different boundaries with her daughters than can a father?
Nonetheless, she is a wonderful photographer.
Rob
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I don't like her work
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But we are left none the wiser. In fact, I question whether there's actually more to understand: she shot what was to hand - as many of us have to do or just not shoot at all - and was blessed with a most photogenic troupe of characters with whom to play.
Yes. I realize “good insight” (per my comment above) can be taken to imply a carefully thought out and planned thing, when in fact it was: notice eye-catching movement/pose, raise camera, click, develop, print, “oohh…that works, must do more of it!”, do more of it and just keep on doing it.
There’s a home recording of John Lennon working on Strawberry Fields Forever. The impression you don’t get listening to it is that he has any idea he’s creating one of the most beloved songs in rock & roll history. Instead he runs through the song over & over, kinda haltingly, likely aware he hasn’t quite got it. At one point he gets annoyed with his guitar playing: “I cannae do it!” (in a faux Scots accent). There’s no magic moment or burst of insight. Yet all the mundane repetition and stumbling eventully turned into The Song.
-Dave-
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I don't like her work
I was intrigued enough by your terse comment to switch to your website.
I believe it is an inevitable feeling for you - your own photographic take is almost a polar opposite to hers; I think the surprise would be if you could enjoy her oeuvre.
Rob
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Yes. I realize “good insight” (per my comment above) can be taken to imply a carefully thought out and planned thing, when in fact it was: notice eye-catching movement/pose, raise camera, click, develop, print, “oohh…that works, must do more of it!”, do more of it and just keep on doing it.
There’s a home recording of John Lennon working on Strawberry Fields Forever. The impression you don’t get listening to it is that he has any idea he’s creating one of the most beloved songs in rock & roll history. Instead he runs through the song over & over, kinda haltingly, likely aware he hasn’t quite got it. At one point he gets annoyed with his guitar playing: “I cannae do it!” (in a faux Scots accent). There’s no magic moment or burst of insight. Yet all the mundane repetition and stumbling eventully turned into The Song.
-Dave-
Looking at lots of her pictures online, I keep coming to the thought that she is really a cross between the positive aspects (depending on us, of course) of David Hamilton and the less savoury ones of Diane Arbus.
She shares Hamilton's acute sense of youthful beauty but, often, betrays it with touches of grit that do little to enhace the whole, except that that`s perhaps the very whole after which she strives. I'm perhaps more uncomfortable with the series Twelve than with her own straight family images; is that because I sense a sort of misplaced adult aura of enjoyment, of incipient gratification in the people with whom the children are sometimes interacting? Is that my own mind playing unwelcome games or am I reading correctly? Who knows - perhaps that's where her skill lies: creating these uncomfortable questions of the self.
The "cabin" location may or may not be typical of her area - I don't know that; what I do know is that I would hate to spend time there. I dislike the sense of disorder and chaos that the terrace area represets, with all those bits of miscellaneous junk everywhere; what sort of mind can either gather all that or live with it? It's been written that she has espoused a white trash ethic for its sense of primitive power without sophistication - dumb brute, if you will - but that the family was never actually poor, both parents being the progeny of doctors, one of whom did his rounds in an Aston Martin. So is she actually faking it? If she is, does that make her a transgressor, an exploiter of both poverty and children? Nope I am not saying that is so; I simply know that those questions arise without definitive answers which, again, may be a huge part of her manipulative skill, her mastery of the strings that pull the puppets: us.
Some time ago I was greatly moved by a film of her southern landscapes, dark, misty and brooding exercises in mood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EiW9KIZy-c
I may have posted it before, but never mind, it is relevant here. Yet, is the strength of the work powerful enough to be viewed without the music and without the subconscious connotations one bears, internalised, from her other work with family? In essence: does her family history empower the landscape work?
There are very few other photographers of whom one can have as many questions that, really, ask the same questions of the questioner.
How much safer my life feels in the warm embraces of Sarah Moon, Saul Leiter and Hans Feurer!
Rob
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Rob, the Mann household isn’t/wasn’t faking it. Sally & her husband certainly chose to reject a more upscale lifestyle, with occupations to match, in favor of a simpler and more rustic one. That was a luxury they had and it puts them in a different category to, say, the “rural poor” who had no such choice. But their lifestyle isn’t a facade…it’s the way they actually live. As you note it does raise questions of authenticity that can, if you’re a thinking person, make you think about your own lifestyle and your own authenticity. :)
-Dave-
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Rob, the Mann household isn’t/wasn’t faking it. Sally & her husband certainly chose to reject a more upscale lifestyle, with occupations to match, in favor of a simpler and more rustic one. That was a luxury they had and it puts them in a different category to, say, the “rural poor” who had no such choice. But their lifestyle isn’t a facade…it’s the way they actually live. As you note it does raise questions of authenticity that can, if you’re a thinking person, make you think about your own lifestyle and your own authenticity. :)
-Dave-
That is a can of worms that I have managed to bury deep in somebody else's psyche. I hope I never discover in whose!
But yeah, you have touched on something with that one. I think it's partly why I want to leave the island. I look around me every day and see what was a paradise for two but, at best, utterly meaningless for one. I wonder if Sally will discover the same thing when she loses her mate - I think he is still okay but suffering from that degenerative disease whose progress she documents. That aside, even the eventual disappearance of the kids into their own nests will change her perceptions forever. Boy, how true that nothing stays the same. What hope did film ever have? ;-)
Rob
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That is a can of worms that I have managed to bury deep in somebody else's psyche. I hope I never discover in whose!
But yeah, you have touched on something with that one. I think it's partly why I want to leave the island. I look around me every day and see what was a paradise for two but, at best, utterly meaningless for one. I wonder if Sally will discover the same thing when she loses her mate - I think he is still okay but suffering from that degenerative disease whose progress she documents. That aside, even the eventual disappearance of the kids into their own nests will change her perceptions forever. Boy, how true that nothing stays the same. What hope did film ever have? ;-)
Rob
Her son died not too, too long ago, so that change has already come.
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Her son died not too, too long ago, so that change has already come.
Oh God, I didn't know that.
In a way, that could be worse for her - for anyone - than losing somebody you know has at least led a reasonably long adult life...
Poor woman; she has my sympathies.
Rob
P.S.
I have just read the Wiki contribution to Sally Mann, and in it there is mention of her son's passing last year. The cause could of itself cause a lot of distress beyond the common one of deep, family-blood loss. How horribly tragic.
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I’m not a fan, either. But I do see in her work the deeply felt tragedy of the entropy in which creation is trapped.
Rand
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I was intrigued enough by your terse comment to switch to your website.
I believe it is an inevitable feeling for you - your own photographic take is almost a polar opposite to hers; I think the surprise would be if you could enjoy her oeuvre.
Rob
That's a curious inference. FYI I love Sally Mann's work.
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I don't like her work
That's why I inferred as I did. Now you tell me you do like her work?
Incidentally; if DougDolde is not the same person as luong, how did luong manage to get into the act?
I can't see where I posted a response to any luong on this thread.
Denmark, rotten smells... ;-) what cooks?
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Manns book is so much more than an autobiography. It's a genuinely important mediation on, well, a lot of things. Race. Family. America. Death. By a smart and hard headed woman.
My opinion is that she is easily the finest living photographer, but by no means an easy one. Hard headed woman. You think immediate family is tough? Have a go at what remains
This is work that has literally changed me, the way art is supposed to. Also, she is a lovely person.
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Manns book is so much more than an autobiography. It's a genuinely important mediation on, well, a lot of things. Race. Family. America. Death. By a smart and hard headed woman.
My opinion is that she is easily the finest living photographer, but by no means an easy one. Hard headed woman. You think immediate family is tough? Have a go at what remains
This is work that has literally changed me, the way art is supposed to. Also, she is a lovely person.
Finest living etc.
That's, as you write, opinion. There are so many wonderful women snappers around - and always have been - that trying to rate them on a gender scale is silly, and rating them on a even wider one here even more risky! But opinion is your right, too.
I am very much taken with her photography myself, hence this thread.
Now, would I rate her olde worlde techniques as particulary great? No. I rate her traditional techniques, done with a very clear eye, as her triumph. Perhaps she felt an inner need to explore antiquated methods too, but that doesn't imply that they are better or even as interesting. There is no value in aping the past unless it can offer something better than what is currently available. Of course, curiosity is a factor, and perhaps commercial expediency too, but those are different matters.
But is art supposed to change one? I'd be more inclined to believe it's there to encourage one in doing what one always wanted to do; that others manage to make it work is the encouragement for me. I have not felt that I want to be a second Sally Mann; I only think she does what she does remarkably well and that her eye is superb.
I don't know her personally, and so don't know if her real persona is one I'd embrace, but then few are.
From what I have learned, she has followed the dream, paid and is still paying her dues, and that's pretty cool enough for me.
Rob
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That's why I inferred as I did. Now you tell me you do like her work?
Incidentally; if DougDolde is not the same person as luong, how did luong manage to get into the act?
I can't see where I posted a response to any luong on this thread.
Denmark, rotten smells... ;-) what cooks?
QT Luong is not Doug Dolde, which your good friend Google will easily confirm :-)
What cooks? I read the thread because of the title. I addressed you because I found it curious that one could infer if photographer A likes photographer's B work based on viewing of photographer A's work. I mentioned my admiration for Mann (and agree with Andrew on all counts) because maybe you'd place my work in the same space as Doug's. But now your line of not wanting to be a second Sally Mann seems to explain.
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QT Luong is not Doug Dolde, which your good friend Google will easily confirm :-)
What cooks? I read the thread because of the title. I addressed you because I found it curious that one could infer if photographer A likes photographer's B work based on viewing of photographer A's work. I mentioned my admiration for Mann (and agree with Andrew on all counts) because maybe you'd place my work in the same space as Doug's. But now your line of not wanting to be a second Sally Mann seems to explain.
Curiouser and curiouser, as the quotation runs, but if it's clear to you, then I'm cool with that!
But still, claiming any single photographer is believed by you (meaning anyone) to be the best in the world is silly: it requires you, at least, to have seen all of them in order to judge properly, or your call is nothing more than hyperbole and based on not a lot. However, claiming someone your favourite is perfectly acceptable, I'd imagine. Trouble is, from my own point of view, I have several favourites which also strikes me as impossible. I must try to pick one, and stop messing about as mood changes. But how to choose between Sarah Moon and Saul Leiter, or even Hans Feurer, for that matter?
You see the difficulty I face every day? Thank God I'm not an art buyer/director in an important ad agency - I'd have gone crazy by now with all these choices.
:-)
Rob
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For those of you in the Washington DC area or who plan to travel down, the National Gallery of Art will be mounting an exhibition of Sally Mann images: https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2018/sally-mann-a-thousand-crossings.html It begins in early March and runs through May. As always, admission is free!!!
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For those of you in the Washington DC area or who plan to travel down, the National Gallery of Art will be mounting an exhibition of Sally Mann images: https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2018/sally-mann-a-thousand-crossings.html It begins in early March and runs through May. As always, admission is free!!!
Oooh Alan, be careful! She's controversial, and somebody is bound to complain and get her little thread closed down! Don't even think of starting a thread on Peter Joel Witkin!
:-)
Rob
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Oooh Alan, be careful! She's controversial, and somebody is bound to complain and get her little thread closed down! Don't even think of starting a thread on Peter Joel Witkin!
:-)
Rob
I just reported the facts and only the facts!!! ;D
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Oooh Alan, be careful! She's controversial, and somebody is bound to complain and get her little thread closed down! Don't even think of starting a thread on Peter Joel Witkin!
:-)
Rob
Excellent. :)
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I just reported the facts and only the facts!!! ;D
Joe Friday.
Rob