Sally Mann

Sally Mann's work is truly impacting and interesting to me because I love to appreciate photography. Mann's art is more spontaneous and the flaws in her process is what makes her photography beautiful and interesting. She feels that if the image has no ambiguity then its useless. All of her photography is shot with damaged lenses and a camera that requires her to use her hand as a shutter, the images are marked by the scratches, light leaks, and shifts in focus that were part of the photographic process as it developed in the nineteenth century. Her early series of "Immediate Family" was improvised, she took pictures of them because they were there. She would just see beauty in something so natural, but was also looking for the "Mann intensity" that the family shared. Mann grew up in Virginia, she was the third child so she ran wild and naked for the first seven years of her life which is why she raised her children the same way. All the photographs of Sally Mann from her childhood are of her naked so she didn't see anything odd about photographing her children naked. Mann's parents were atheist so she feels uncomfortable expressing her spiritual side so she expresses her spirituality through photographs. In addition, for the "Immediate Family" series she expresses her maternal love through photographing her loved ones. She loves the south and loves to photograph the landscaping because it has a sense of history and nature that is rapidly being lost. She is completely captivated by the process and results of her photography that even the people around her feel an impact.