RE: [Leica] Re:Sally Mann, digest V17 #195

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

I know it's changing the subject slightly, but I would go a good deal
further than finding Sally Mann's family work to be "theatrical
contrivances." I would suggest that they represent a form of child abuse,
or, if that term is  too strong for some, then they are examples of serious
exploitation of children. I wonder if the term "informed consent" means
anything to her?

Which has a great deal to do with her as a mother and a human being, and
nothing to do with her landscapes, or any of her skills as a photographer.

B. D.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Matthew
> Phillips
> Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 9:29 AM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: [Leica] Re:Sally Mann, digest V17 #195
>
>
> >Sally Mann, in here latest landscape work has managed to capture
> an almost
> >Matthew Brady/Civil War type look by using old lenses she has
> collected, as
> >well as playing with development and printing (some she shot on
> Ortho film,
> >which give a different feel again).
>
> While I'm no fan of Sally's prima donna persona, and find her family
> portraits to be theatrical contrivances (albeit exquisitely printed... by
> someone else), her recent southern landscape series are sublimely
> beautiful. The one's she'd recently shown at the Reynold's Gallery in
> Richmond, Virginia were made with an archaic 'wet-plate' process. The
> process is tedious and dangerous (very toxic), requiring that the negative
> plate be exposed while still wet with freshly applied emulsion.
> In the Mann
> landscapes you can see the surge marks of the emulsion sliding down the
> plate during exposure. Exposures are a hit-or-miss guess due to the speed
> variability of the chemical soup, but at best require very long exposures.
> While the high contrast tonality of Sally's landscapes are not neccesarily
> inherent to the wet-plate process, she uses it to her pictorial advantage.
> What is remarkable about these images is the degree of atmosphere and a
> 'sense of place' that is retained with very little apparent detail. If you
> think of these images as romantic, then its comes from the premise that
> romance is about careful editing.
>
> Regards,
> M.Phillips
>
>