A Look At: Sally Mann

"Few photographers of any time or place have matched Sally Mann's steadiness of simple eyesight, her serene technical brilliance, and the clearly communicated eloquence she derives from her subjects, human and otherwise - subjects observed with an ardor that is all but indistinguishable from love." -Renolds Price, Time
Sally Mann is an American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death. Living in Virginia, she is best known for the photograph series of her three young children.
Her black and white photographs are unique in her subject matter. It is a blend of documentary style and stylized. Because they are her own children in their own setting of where they group up, there is a comfortability that the children have in the pictures. Still Mann uses her children to say something about childhood. She also focuses on other subject matter such as death and decay, shooting actual decaying carcasses. But the lighting in all of her pieces is dramatic and sets the specific mood she is trying to accomplish.


Jessie in the Wind, 1989


Candy Cigarette, 1989


Untitled, At Twelve Series (Juliet in the Chair)