Sally Mann provokes your mind

House of Culture (Kulturhuset), Stockholm

In the spring of 2007 Scandinavia is the place of two great photo exhibitions. The masters of American art photography Sally Mann and Cindy Sherman are on display in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Sally Mann is shown in the House of Culture (Kulturhuset) and Cindy Sherman is presenting a retrospective exhibition in the prestigious Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, outside Copenhagen.

One month after the opening of the Sally Mann exhibition, I shared the photos with many other visitors, even if the rain was pouring down outside the rather ugly modern building of House of Culture (Kulturhuset), formerly a provisory building of the Swedish parliament.

The exhibition has stirred up a great deal of interest and nation wide art TV programs have been devoted to the pictures and the life of Sally Mann. The art critiques of the press have given many points of views. The photo press and the internet have had a lot of open discussions.

All the photos of the different projects are very well exhibited and in the entrance hall is a TV interview running. The 24 large prints of the famous series – Immediate Family (1992) – are causing the most attention. The images of Sally’s children, photographed with a master’s hand in a dream like environment, are the ones that provoked the American public so deeply years ago. One of the pictures – The Three Graces — of 1994, has never been shown in public in the US, but has been part of the TV programs and news paper articles here in Sweden. It is showing Sally and her daughters pee

Sally Mann, The Three Graces, 1994

in sunshine back light. A picture of the most natural part of life, any human being and animal will do that daily, but never the less the one picture that has been discussed most on the inter net here in Sweden. May be this image is searching the accepted border line of art of photography. Any religious argument telling us that we should not show this kind a natural event feels kind of stupid. Should we be provoked by showing pictures of what any mammal is doing? We are accepting to see the animals peeing in the nature films. Is the human being superior and standing over nature? Of course not, we are a part of nature, as Sally Mann’s latest project – What remains—is showing. The reason why Sally Mann publishes – The Three Graces— in Scandinavia is not clear, but here it will never provoke anyone enough to be tested against the law of child pornography.

The pictures of – Immediate Family (1992) – appeal to most everyone, because we all have our pictures, in the head or in the photo album, of a time we like or dislike. The situations of the images are in our mind and they are some where between reality and unreality. The large prints shown here are printed beautifully, and masterly, with a wonderful gray scale holing out the lightning light parts of the prints. Maybe that’s why the images open my mind for a dream like state.

Sally Mann, Deep South 1997, and Madonna

The landscape photography project --Deep South (1997)—is by no means part of traditional landscaping. The pictures are recorded with an old home made big glass plate technology. Some of the solutions even include brown tea. Old lenses have given diffuse parts of the prints, and hair and cracks in the emulsions gives a strange reality of the dreamlike south country side. The branches of the trees tangles to get hold of you or your mind. Once again the spectator walks into a forest or landscape of his own, it is not Sally’s intention or mind that sets the role of what one thinks or sees, --she maybe guides you. Some of the large landscape are mounted on the walls side by side of windows, moving the visitors attention to view out over a central place of Stockholm, --Sergels square. The drug dealer’s square, and the center of big shops of modern business life. On one of the buildings wall shows an enormous print of Madonna in the cloth design of H&M. The view could not be more filled of contrast!

Sally Mann, Faces 2003

In the center of Sally Mann’s exhibition are big format portraits of Sally’s now grown up kids. All images are part of the project –Faces (2003). These are close up portraits, only showing parts of their faces, surprisingly stiff and without obvious contact, like a dead. The vast difference in size of the face in the image and in your own face hindered my mind to get contact with the content of the image. I just felt so small, like in front of the death.

Life outside the gallery 3

In all there is a fantastic challenge of your mind, laid out by the photos of Sally Mann to visitors of this exhibition. See her books or her exhibitions if you can. The exhibition is open until the 6^th of May 2007. More pictures and information can be found on the sites:

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/sally-mann/
and
http://www.dn.se/DNet/road/Classic/article/47/jsp/bildspel.jsp?a=611631