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CLOSER LOOK REFLECTION

Sally Mann’s ‘Immediate Family’ and Death

Mann’s images in ‘Immediate Family’ show her subjects in a state of content, content with their surroundings and with the omni-presence of the camera. Her family seem to move slowly through life and through the book we hold in our hands, despite the titles incorporating ages and dates, there is a sense of timelessness and fantasy to the narrative.

'Virginia in the Sun' 1985 ©SALLY MANN

In some of the images this timeless quality transforms into more of a stillness, her children moving from subjects of a documentary to still life’s in a collection. It becomes apparent that just as Mann is aware of the joys and trivialities of life, she is equally intrigued and conscious of our fragile mortality. Since ‘Immediate Family’ she has gone on to document her husband Larry’s deteriorating physical health as a result of muscular dystrophy as well as the University of Kentucky’s ‘Body Farm‘, but even here in the serene Virginia landscape there is evidence of Mann’s curiosity. In an article from the Guardian in 2012, Blake Morrison commented that:

In truth, though, Mann’s lively obsession with death – her capacity to be unsqueamish about it while seeing its thumbprint everywhere – originated way back in early childhood. Her father was a country doctor who had seen his share of death and who liked to say there were only three subjects for art: sex, death and whimsy. He was himself an artist in his spare time, and his whimsical creations included a man with three penises (Portnoy’s Triple Complaint) carved from a tree trunk. It was an unconventional, rural childhood, middle class but bohemian: no church, no country club, no television. Mann describes herself as a “feral child”, running naked with dogs or riding her horse with only a string through its mouth.

'Jessie and the Deer', 1985 ©SALLY MANN

Mann presents us with the role of death in country life through images such as ’squirrel season’ and ’Jessie and the dear’, but these only solidify the nomadic theme we are presented with throughout the entirety of the book. What I found more interesting were the images that seemed to exude a feeling of death, or in some case more of a permanent stillness.

'Dirty Jessie', 1985 ©SALLY MANN

Here in ’Dirty Jessie’ we are presented with a clearly live Jessie but whose legs are positioned at such an uncomfortable angle that to make connections with a fall and broken limbs is one that many make on first seeing the scene. The grass spreading away from the body with a scattering of leaves contributes to the notion of impact.

In ’Flour Paste’ it is hard not to conjure up thoughts of death. The flour past on young, sleight legs gives the appearance of a much older subject, of frailty and ultimately when we consider the framing, pairing with ’Squirrel Season’ and an ankle bracelet that brings to mind a body tag, death.

'Flour Paste', 1987 ©SALLY MANN

Likewise in ’Jessie’s Cut’, the blood, stitches, closed eyes and lack of any other human presence create a sense of unease.

'Jessie's Cut', 1985 ©SALLY MANN

These images carry a real potency and add weight to the complete series of images Mann presents us with, and to me, it offers another strand to the book that I dont entirely understand – I love that.

– Matt

 

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