12 DIGS.NET | 11.23.2018
(top) R. Kim Rushing, American, born 1961, Sally with camera, about 1998,
Gelatin silver paint, Image: 27.9 x 35.6 cm (11 x 14 in.), Collection of Sally
Mann, EX.2018.9.109. (bottom) Sally Mann, American, born 1951, e Turn,
2005, Gelatin silver print, Image: 94.9 x 117.2 cm (37 3/8 x 46 1/8 in.) Private
collection Image © Sally Mann, EX.2018.9.81.
C I T Y | S A L LY M A N N
PHOTOGRAPHS:
COURTESY
OF
J.
PAUL
GETTY
MUSEUM
W R I T T E N B Y J E N N T H O R N T O N
The Getty gives maximum exposure
to photographer Sally Mann with an
international survey of her work
W
hile the world embraces a retouched
reali, there's Sally Mann to remind
us all of just how striking unaltered
can be. In the paean of contemporary artists,
the photographer's work has carved out a space
where she and she alone belongs—somewhere
between transgressive and transcendent, the lack
of contrivance in her pictures the most beautiful
things about them.
is month, the J. Paul Get Museum is giving the
legendary lenswoman her due with an exhibit opening
Nov. 16. Sally Mann: A ousand Crossings marks her
first major international survey and will invite viewers
to look through her incredibly evocative lens and see
why her images have garnered acclaim—and courted
controversy—from all corners of the globe. Organized
by the National Gallery of Art and the Peabody Essex
Museum, the show is comprised of more than 110
photographs—many exhibited for the first time—that
together explore Mann's relationship to what is familiar
and fertile territory for the photographer, the American
South, in all its pathos and paradoxes, beau and
sanctuary. Oentimes with an uncomfortable intimacy,
as if one is disturbing something they shouldn't.
Born and still residing in Virginia, and represented
by the Gagosian Gallery, New York, Mann brings a raw
depth of perspective to her native land, a subject on which
she elaborated with the prose of a poet in her stunning
memoir Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs, a finalist
for the National Book Award. Split into five sections,
divided to explore varying themes from family and
land to race and identi, A ousand Crossings brings
the best of Mann to bear—her empathy and elusiveness,
brooding and being, and sheer force of one human spirit
to both inspire and unsettle. Hers is a vision not easily
described. But this show does much to capture the artist
as it does the brilliance of her art. getty.edu
PORTRAIT
of a WOMAN
