Watching Sally Mann as she worked was truly an enlightening experience. I enjoyed being able to take a step back from the proverbial viewfinder, and see how Sally Mann approaches the process of taking a photograph. It was interesting to consider how her methods and what camera she used determined what type of picture she took. Because Sally Mann uses an 8x10 view camera, she isn’t able to go into an urban area to take candid photos. Instead, Mann’s subject is her immediate family and the land that surrounds them. By constraining herself through her tools, Mann is able to take pictures that reflect her family centric worldview.
I also liked the way the viewer could observe how Mann links one project to the next. Mann’s career started off with pictures of her children and immediate family around the farm, until the pictures naturally started to focus more and more on the farm and less on the people. Unfortunately for Mann (but fortunately for her art), her life was interrupted by a traumatic event. An escaped prisoner was killed on Mann’s property. However, Mann started taking pictures of the land where the prisoner was killed, which led her to her next project: exploring death and the cycle of life.
It was very inspirational to see how an artist’s thought process works. It was particularly striking to see how Mann never really struggled to come up with an idea for a project, instead she just flowed from one to the other.
Watching Sally Mann as she worked was truly an enlightening experience. I enjoyed being able to take a step back from the proverbial viewfinder, and see how Sally Mann approaches the process of taking a photograph. It was interesting to consider how her methods and what camera she used determined what type of picture she took. Because Sally Mann uses an 8x10 view camera, she isn’t able to go into an urban area to take candid photos. Instead, Mann’s subject is her immediate family and the land that surrounds them. By constraining herself through her tools, Mann is able to take pictures that reflect her family centric worldview.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the way the viewer could observe how Mann links one project to the next. Mann’s career started off with pictures of her children and immediate family around the farm, until the pictures naturally started to focus more and more on the farm and less on the people. Unfortunately for Mann (but fortunately for her art), her life was interrupted by a traumatic event. An escaped prisoner was killed on Mann’s property. However, Mann started taking pictures of the land where the prisoner was killed, which led her to her next project: exploring death and the cycle of life.
It was very inspirational to see how an artist’s thought process works. It was particularly striking to see how Mann never really struggled to come up with an idea for a project, instead she just flowed from one to the other.