Jessie Mann Discusses the Role of the Subject in Art
This week, photography blog Subjectify is featuring a serialized interview with Jessie Mann, daughter of photographer Sally Mann (Season One) and the subject of much of her mother’s work. (That’s Jessie with her brother and sister, in Sally Mann’s 1989 photo, “Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia.”)
In the interview, Jessie talks about Self Possessed, her collaborative project with photographer Len Prince, examining the role of the subject in art.
Installments of the interview will be published on Subjectify throughout the week.
Sally Mann at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta
Atlanta’s Jackson Fine Art is currently showing a selection from Sally Mann’s (Season 1) latest body of work, What Remains. Using her three children as subject matter, the up-close images depict them in animation and peaceful expressiveness, far from death but evoking a sense of inevitability, drift and suspension, as well as comfort. Mann prints from wet-plate collodion negatives, an arduous process first used by photographers prior to the Civil War. The “imperfect process” produces a haunting, tonal beauty.
Also on exhibit are recent self-portraits of the artist. Unlike the strange serenity of her children’s portraits, Mann’s photographs of herself are unsettling. They provoke comparisons to the wretched patients of early 20th century insane asylums that often suffered from ‘treatments’ far worse than any disease. Mann even appears trapped behind the glass of the same primitive photographic process that seems to liberate her children. Despite the dreadful imagery these photographs conjure, there is no hint of victimization, no need for sympathy. “Her engrossing self-portraits show us the fine line between lunacy and lucidity” (from the press release).
Sally Mann is on view at Jackson Fine Art until April 26th. For further information, please visit the gallery website.
Three person show featuring Sally Mann in Denver
The work of Art 21 artist Sally Mann (Season 1) is prominently featured in still, a new three person show at the Center for Visual Art at the Metropolitan State College of Denver, on view through April 30. The show offers up three contemporary photographers who grapple with issues of death and mortality in their work. Sally Mann’s photos feature old battlegrounds and she ponders what kind of lasting resonance a dead body has on a space.
You can find more information about the show here.
Sally Mann on stage: Some Things Are Private in Providence
The Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, presents Some Things Are Private. This world premiere begins performances on Friday, February 15 and runs through March 23 in the Dowling Theater. At the heart of this play, tackling the hot-button topic of censorship and art, is Season 1 artist Sally Mann. In the 1990’s, Mann’s collection Immediate Family gained notoriety for including nude photographs of her own children. Blending fiction with public record, Some Things Are Private takes a provocative look at who determines “what is art?”
Over a year in the making and stretching the form of docudrama, Some Things Are Private focuses on Sally Mann’s own words and those of her critics and supporters, all drawn from public-record interviews and letters. In addition to researching public documents, the team worked with actors in a workshop setting, and recorded reactions to Mann’s photographs. Playwright Deborah Salem Smith explains, “half the room thought her photographs were beautiful, and exactly the same number said they shouldn‚Äôt even be up on the wall at all. We were intrigued that a single image could be so polarizing.”
The first performance on February 15 at 8pm is pay-what-you-can. Regular ticket prices are $20-60. Regular performances start at 7pm on Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and at 8:00 pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays with selected Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2pm. After every performance, audiences are invited to share their response to the play’s production and themes for approximately twenty minutes. Tickets are on sale now at the Trinity Rep box office, 201 Washington Street; by phone at (401) 351-4242; and online at www.trinityrep.com.
Elsewhere, Sally Mann currently has a solo exhibition on view at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA through February 14. Read more about the show here.
Sally Mann’s Immediate Family
After more than 15 years since the original exhibition, Season 1 artist Sally Mann’s Immediate Family is again on display at Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City.
Immediate Family was simultaneously criticized and acclaimed by the art world in 1992 when her family pictures were first shown. The series depicts Mann’s three children at play in an idyllic Southern romp under the Virginia sun. Set within the confines of a jaded garden‚ “a haunted landscape that reveals both past and present, corruption and innocence, life and death‚” the Mann family story is set aflame at the crossroads of fiction and fantasy.
Responsible for a renewed interest in the 8×10 large format camera, antique processes, and staged photographs yielding an unbridled sense of intimacy, Sally Mann’s artistic shadow looms large in the imaginations of a younger generation of artists. This new exhibition stands as an opportunity to reevaluate Immediate Family, and the artist’s accomplishment.
Immediate Family is on view at Edwynn Houk Gallery through January 12. View more images from the exhibition here.
