Place: Sally Mann.

Sally Mann, Untitled, 1998, #30 from the Deep South series. Gelatin silver print, 38 x 48" (97 x 122 cm). [C] Sally Mann. Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.

About the Art: There's a strong sense of place in this untitled photograph from Sally Mann's Deep South series. Its large scale contributes to a feeling that you are being pulled into a spiritual place or a place of brooding mystery. The bayou waters seem to have a story to tell. There's a feeling of a landscape evaporating before the eyes. The scene seems slightly out of focus, as if perceived by a sleepwalker in soft and fragile light. Overexposed in the darkroom and shot through an antique lens, the photograph conveys a thick air of ghostliness, or other worldliness. The image seems archaic, a portrait of compromised beauty. You can get lost in this place. It's desolate, devoid of human presence, yet haunted by secrets of past lives.

About the Artist: Sally Mann was born in 1951 and grew up in Lexington, Virginia. She went away to school and received a master's degree in writing, after which she returned to rural Virginia where she still lives and works. The South is very much a part of who she is and what her work is about. For many years, her children, and the idyllic places where they posed were her main photographic subjects. After twelve years of photographing her family, she shifted to landscapes, further creating a sense of place that is distinctly her own--haunting, lyrical, and Southern.

Things to Consider: Compare the sense of place evoked in this large scale photograph with the sense of place experienced when viewing Richard Serra's sculptures, What descriptive words are distinctive to each art form? What words are applicable to both?

Compare Mann's contemporary work to those of 19th-century pioneers of landscape photography. What qualities do they have in common?

Compare the atmospheric qualities in this photograph with a Chinese landscape painting.

GalleryCard submitted by Art 21, Inc. as a resource for the television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century. The series will premier this fall. Check your local PBS schedule for viewing time. For the free full-color teacher's guide to this series, e-mail your request for the Art 21 guide to [e-mail].

schoolarts September 2001

For more information on Art 21 see page 78