'What Remains', The Life & Work of Sally Mann

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNEd93H4pPY&w=420&h=315]

Until seeing this documentary I never truly appreciated Sally Mann's work or really understood the motivation behind her subject matter but this film gave me a real insight to her photographs and her subjects which is usually images of her husband or children. It starts by telling the story of how she was catapulted into fame with her series 'Immediate Family', 1992 which featured controversial images of her naked children who she photographed in an unusual and confrontational way.

However, the work that stood out most to me was her most recent body of work 'The Flesh and the Spirit' which featured stunning portraits of her children almost 18 years after the 'Immediate Family' series.

Technique:

"Mann 
has

 experimented
 with 
color 
photography, 
she 
has 
remained 
most
 interested 
in black 
and 
white,
 especially 
photography’s antique 
technology.
 She 
has 
long 
used 
an
 8x10 bellows 
camera, 
and
 has 
explored 
platinum
 and 
bromoil 
printing 
processes.
 In 
the 
mid 1990s she 
began 
using 
the 
wet
 plate 
collodion 
process 
to 
produce
 pictures 
that 
almost
 seem
 like hybrids
 of 
photography, 
painting, 
and
 sculpture."www.sallymann.com