Sally Mann

Sally Mann 1951 -

Born Lexington, Virginia, Sally is probably best known for her third collection entitled Immediate Family from 1992, which consists of 65 black & white photographs of her 3 children  , but caused something of a controversy because although it featured images of a typical childhood including dressing up, vamping ( it's a girlie thing ) and skinny dipping ( it's a sunshine thing ),whilst other images touched on the themes of loneliness, sexuality, injury and death. There have been 2 documentaries on the subject of Sally and an insight into her life with the first being Blood Ties and the other What Remains...from her slightly macabre collection of the same name in which "She photographs the implied spirits of a Civil War battlefield, the physical processes of decomposition at a forensic site, the disfigurement to her family land as the result of a police chase, her skinned greyhound, and her now-grown children." Mmmmm.....check it out, you know you want to.
My first chosen image of Sally's is entitled Candy Cigarette where the shallow depth of field is put good use to draw attention to the characters in the frame who appear somewhat sinister in a backwoods kind of way unless of course you take the time to check out the Blood Lines documentary in which case you'll see the time and effort she puts in to making these images what they are. I'd also like to point out that the tones in this particular image are bloody gorgeous, but that's just my opinion so feel free to disagree but I wont be listening.




Secondly, we have Playing In The Pines  which follows on with the same theme but if you had your suspicions about her children in the first, then God help you in the second




Now if I had to pick a particular favourite then I'd have to go with the next one with its superb shallow depth of field as you can see from the clarity of the face through to the point where the focus has already started to diminish by the time you've reached her shoulders.