Does one need a photobook about someone else’s family? What universal aspects of image-making allow the work to transcend from a family album to a book that illustrates the broader condition of human understanding, behavior, and endeavor? There are notable examples throughout the history of photography where images of an artist’s family are remembered […]
Every photographer parent that I know has what to the non-parenting world seems like a self-indulgent family album project. Every. one. of. them. Myself. included. Some have several. Making photographs of the family is part of the experience of getting through life. We use the camera to illustrate the mundane, the banal, and the exciting […]
“The historical road of photography is paved with books and bodies of work about family. It is a natural resource for making work” The historical road of photography is paved with books and bodies of work about family. It is a natural resource for making work. Emmet Gowin, Sally Mann, Judith Black […]
“The other reason is the question of memory – in line with the invention of the medium, mass images of the dead emerged in the second half of the 19th century. A fashion wave that is not only reserved for the nobility and clergy, but also for simple people, in order to have a portrait, a memory picture of someone at all”. -Felix Hoffman
“One does not have to be born of heterogametic sex to be reminded of what erosion means to the limestone cliffs, nor to extrapolate what a spring without rain posits for a summer’s cooling pool.”
“Upon opening the package a feather and an anvil fell onto my groin. I have carried them since like a pebble in my shoe that I refuse to set aside or extract”
Untitled (Mississippi Landscape), 1998. (fig. 1) By Alison R. Hafera, An Excerpt from “Taken in Water: The Photograph as Memorial Image in Sally Mann’s Deep South” (2007) ‘What have they done?’ cries the child / ‘Why have they beaten me, tortured me, / wound me in wire from the cotton gin that tore our years […]
A Dialogue Between Steven Cantor & Sally Mann QUESTION: The two of you began working together back in 1990 when Steven documented the making of the “Immediate Family” series, Sally’s incredibly intimate and candid portrayal of family life. The resulting short film, “Blood Ties”, was nominated for an Academy Award. Sally, what about Steven, at […]
By Dana Cox Sally Mann has been quoted as saying, “Art’s role… is almost nefarious. It’s to challenge expectation. To push a little bit, whether that’s aesthetically, politically, or culturally (McQuaid, p.1).” Sally Mann is an artist who became well-known for the controversial photographs of her three children, Jessie, Emmet, and Virginia. She was born […]