Newsletter
- Spring 1999
Interview
A
Conversation with photographer Sally Mann
In the following interview, Director Marianne Doezema and Sally
Mann discuss some of her photographs included in the current exhibition,
Still Time.
MD: What do you mean
by the title of the show, Still Time?
SM: When I think about approaching 50, the thought often occurs
to me, "Oh good, there's still time to make a little more
art." I think there's a feeling in the back of any artist's
mind that it's always a race-against time and against all the
other interferences that come along with age. But also, I was
mindful of the fact that photography is uniquely the process that
stills time.
MD: I understand that you were involved with the selection of
the photographs that are included in the exhibition. What factors
influenced decisions about what to include and how were those
different than the decisions involved in the creation of a work
of art?
SM: As I've created photographs
over the years, there have been a number of quirky little "orphan"
pictures. These may have been signifiers of a new body of work,
a new direction, or a new concept that needs to be explored. I
call them orphans because they don't have a body of work associated
with them; they're more in a nature of a promissory note. I'm
always having to make decisions about those pictures. Those are
the exciting choices that an artist makes-how far to explore those
little blips. But when we were curating Still Time, I wanted
to include the tried and true, the survivors, not the little orphans
but the images that are firmly situated in a family of work.
MD: When I look
at the images in Still Time, I'm reminded of the South.
Do you consider yourself a southern photographer?
SM: I do. I believe the work has that ineffable southern quality,
whatever it is. Oh, the obsession with place, with family, with
both the personal and the social past; the susceptibility to myth;
the love of this light which is all our own; and the readiness
to experiment with dosages of romance that would be fatal to most
late-20th-century artists.
MD: You've always worked with a large format camera, haven't
you?
SM: I began working with a 5X7-inch camera that my father had
from his childhood. I fell in love with the large format camera
and the whole complicated process of setting up. The difficulty
didn't daunt me-I found it challenging and exciting. Of course,
the reward is that you get a big negative which produces a beautiful
print.
MD: And you have been commended many times for your spectacular
printing technique. I know you've become very involved with the
developing process, in some cases manipulating the print in the
darkroom to create certain effects.
SM: In fact, occasionally I think I'm more of a craftsman than
an artist. When I'm spending months and months in the dark room,
at times perfecting the corner of a print, I think, other people
would be out there taking more pictures, why am I working on a
tiny detail in a print?
MD: Let's back up and talk about how you learned to take photographs.
SM: I didn't have any real photographic education. I thought
I was going to be a writer, and I ended up getting a master's
degree at Hollins, where they have a wonderful creative writing
program. My undergraduate career was somewhat checkered. I attended
Bennington for a short time and I took one course in photography
there. But basically I had to learn photography by myself.
MD: Though, clearly, something about it attracted you in a very
powerful way, and I don't imagine it was the money.
SM: Not at all. Photography brought my husband and me 25 years
of penury. I tried to earn a living in this little town, Lexington,
Virginia, doing wedding and baby pictures.
MD: When you were creating photographs for yourself, a certain
range of subjects interested you. Why, for example, were you drawn
to landscapes in the beginning?
SM: Two years ago, I
might not have been able to answer that question the way I will
now. In the last year and a half, I've had occasion to go over
all my old negatives and in doing so realized that consistently,
from the time I picked up a camera-from my first roll of film,
virtually-I've been photographing my family's farm, property that
has been in my family most of my life. All the family photographs
were taken on it. Half of my early landscapes were from the farm.
And when I think about why I wanted to leave that barren boarding
school among the hilltops of Vermont and why I've known since
I was 17 that I wanted to live in Virginia, the reason was that
I had a vision of this farm that I have loved all my life.
Recently, my husband and I were able to buy the farm, and we're
breaking ground this week to build a house on it. I really believe
now that all those photographs are paeans to this extraordinary
land that has been somehow part of me since I was a child.
MD: And so obviously there are strong connections between the
landscape photographs, depicting this place to which you have
such an attachment, and the photographs of your children growing
up there. Can you describe what you had in mind when you created
the photographs in the series Immediate Family?
SM: When I started doing the family pictures, there was originally
a documentary impulse. It wasn't even conscious. Something would
happen and I would reach for a camera, because of the power of
what was taking place. As I continued the project, that impulse
expanded-I was interested in a lot more than just the black eye
or the stitches in the emergency room. I was after the whole,
all-encompassing concept of childhood, including the halcyon moments
at the farm, the quotidian aspects of childhood as well as the
more dramatic ones.
MD: But your large format camera is a relatively cumbersome piece
of equipment. You couldn't just take a snapshot.
SM: But the camera was ever-present. It was always set up. And
the children knew that if there was some drama or if there was
something alluring or engaging or interesting about what they
were doing, a picture was likely to be made.
MD: Can you comment on the relationship between accident and
calculation in your work?
SM: It's absolutely critical. Like all photographers, I depend
on serendipity, and when you're photographing children there's
often an abundance of it. I would have an idea of what a photograph
would look like and then something would happen-a dog might lumber
in and become a critical element. I pray for what might be referred
to as the angel of chance.
MD: The proportion of calculation clearly varies among your photographs.
Some seem more staged than others and some reflect more manipulation
in the darkroom than others.
SM: Exactly. Fallen
Child is a perfect example of a completely staged picture.
My daughter had fallen asleep, so I had 15 minutes to set it up.
The grass was on her body but it wasn't as artfully arranged as
it was in the photograph. The Perfect Tomato is, on the
other hand, a snapshot. I had set up the camera to take a picture,
which is now called Goosebumps. It's a normal picture of
my daughter Jessie sitting on the cabin railing. After taking
the shot I pushed the camera away, and Jessie stretched and was
standing on the rail of the cabin. The people who were watching
Goosebumps being taken were still there, over to the left.
I turned around and Jessie was doing this wonderful little pirouette,
and then suddenly she just delicately dropped onto the table,
into this shaft of light. I slammed a film holder in, didn't have
time to focus or even compose the picture. I pulled out the dark
slide and tripped the shutter just as she was doing a turn in
the middle of this sun stream-and that was it. I had no idea if
I had gotten the picture or not, but there it is. She isn't even
in focus. That's why it's called The Perfect Tomato because
what's in focus is the tomato in the foreground, and Jessie is
blurred. I think it's my favorite picture.
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