Sally Mann is chatty and open about nearly any subject imaginable. The\u00a0photographer easily gets carried off in conversation, finding it hard to\u00a0resist sharing stories about anything from her friend\u2019s mother who had a lobotomy, to the time the poet Forrest Gander happened to drop\u00a0by unannounced (the moment turned into a lifelong friendship).<\/p>\n
Her disarming trust\u00a0belies her 74 years on this planet \u2013 and brief moment at the centre of a culture wars storm, which we\u2019ll get to later. Via video call from her beloved farm in Lexington, Virginia<\/a>, she\u2019s gabbing with me as if we are long-lost friends, breezily dropping one-liners and only occasionally invoking an internal censor that\u00a0tends to arrive a little too late. All this energy services a profound curiosity, an intense work ethic and a meagre capacity for sitting still that has seen her declared one of the most influential photographers working today.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the risk of being honest? Other than ridicule, which I\u2019m used to<\/p>\n Born in Lexington in 1951, Mann was, she\u00a0has\u00a0said, a \u201cnear-feral\u201d child, the last of three children\u00a0in a bohemian family, who hardly wore clothes until she\u00a0was five. Her father, a country doctor, gave her\u00a0her first camera. At school, she emerged from the\u00a0darkroom \u201cecstatic\u201d with the results.<\/p>\n She gradually built a respectable following for her atmospheric photos that drip with the soul of the US south. But in 1992, she was catapulted into the centre of the US\u2019s culture wars when she released her third book of photos, Immediate Family. The book was ostensibly a homage to life with her husband, Larry, and three young children on her beloved farm, and was chock full of beautiful black-and-white images capturing family moments shaded with ethereal transcendence, loving intimacy and bracing intrusiveness.<\/p>\n Seeing the photos in Immediate Family can feel like glimpsing private family events. With a wash of overexposed light, an image such as The Perfect Tomato turns her daughter Jessie into a literal angel ballet-dancing naked on the family picnic table. It could rightfully be called a perfect photograph, but it \u2013 and others like it \u2013 also pushed a lot of buttons. After the book\u2019s publication, Mann faced a torrent of criticism<\/a>. She was declared an unfit mother, branded a child pornographer, excoriated in the New York Times, and found herself hunted by a stalker. Though criticism has softened as her work has been reappraised in recent years, it\u2019s still a live issue for Mann \u2013 The Perfect Tomato was recently among five photos seized by police at an exhibition of her work at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, after it caught the attention of religious conservatives.<\/p>\n Mann doesn\u2019t shrink from controversy, and doesn\u2019t take kindly to having her artistic expression curtailed. \u201cWhat\u2019s the risk of being honest,\u201d she asks, \u201cother than ridicule, which I\u2019m used to.\u201d But she also says that she probably wouldn\u2019t release Immediate Family today, because parasocial relationships enabled by the internet have changed the equation.<\/p>\n \u201cMy family pictures were an unanticipated risk, in that they made people think that they knew us. A lot of people feel like they know you because you\u2019ve made yourself available. I don\u2019t think the family pictures would have been prudent going out in the world now, because there\u2019s so much access to people. That just gives me the willies \u2013 what goes on to the internet and how available people are now.\u201d<\/p>\n But as much as Mann says she doesn\u2019t like the spotlight, her oeuvre<\/a> does indicate a certain willingness to share. In 2015, she published her memoir, Hold Still, an extremely open book that found her airing all kinds of family history, while sharing personal diaries, letters\u00a0and photographs. The book dives into the dark heart of racism in the US south and considers her immigrant family\u2019s background of desperate poverty and death. It shocked readers with just how macabre and forthcoming she could be, and also featured startling images of personal vulnerability \u2013 we see Mann\u2019s spread legs and pubic hair in a photo she orchestrated to capture\u00a0the moment her third child emerged during delivery. (Sadly, Mann labels the photo a \u201cdud\u201d.)<\/p>\n The memoir was highly acclaimed, labelled the autobiography of the year, and once again brought the photographer into the spotlight. Though for Mann \u2013 who has a master\u2019s degree in creative writing and has described writing and photography as her \u201ctwin artistic passions\u201d \u2013 the move wasn\u2019t easy. \u201cSwitching from being\u00a0a photographer to writing a book felt a little risky to me,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought I was going to get humiliated.\u00a0Of\u00a0course I was thrilled when it was well received, but\u00a0I\u00a0did spend five years on it, so I would have\u00a0been\u00a0gutted\u00a0if it hadn\u2019t gotten some attention.\u201d<\/p>\n But she hasn\u2019t left photography behind. Her eerie black-and-white landscapes of the American south have been collected in Deep South (2005) and Southern Landscape (2013), and she documented the effects of her husband Larry\u2019s muscular dystrophy on his body in the intimate 2009 series Proud Flesh. (\u201cThe pictures are like one big caress,\u201d she has said.) \u201cI get this little frisson of excitement every time I pick up those cameras and head out to take pictures,\u201d she says. \u201cI like risk. I couldn\u2019t take the same pictures over and over again. If it\u2019s not challenging, it\u2019s probably not good.\u201d<\/p>\n