Collection of the Estée Lauder Companies Inc. The Two Virginias #4, 1991, Sally Mann, gelatin silver print. With its ominous metaphoric overtones, the term denotes a type of slow-moving channel that flows through wetlands, turning dark as vegetation decays. Although many were made in the Great Dismal Swamp, Mann titled all of them Blackwater. She created these works as tintypes, photographs on sheets of black-lacquered metal. Mann’s pictures present threatening and visually chaotic realms that only the most desperate and brave would dare enter. His insurrection and its backlash were among the bloodiest racial conflicts in American history. Turner hid for more than two months near the Great Dismal Swamp before he was discovered, tried, and executed. Mann’s interest in these sites was inspired by the story of Nat Turner, the leader of a violent slave rebellion in 1831. For centuries the treacherous swamp had offered sanctuary to fugitive slaves, while the rivers had provided means of escape. In 2008, as Mann explored stories of oppression and struggles for freedom embedded in the Virginia landscape, she began to photograph in the Great Dismal Swamp and along the nearby Blackwater and Nottoway Rivers. For some photographs, she used high-contrast film that exaggerated both light and dark to capture what she called the “radical light of the American South.” For other pictures, she adopted a nineteenth-century method of making negatives on glass, welcoming flaws in the process for expressive effect. Mann experimented with her technique as she traveled, fitting her camera with a faulty antique lens that created flares of light and other unpredictable results. The photographs she made in the Deep South often allude to larger national histories of war, suffering, and injustice as Mann sought to show how the land held the scars of the past. I have been ambushed by my backgrounds.” She began with the rolling hills, rivers, and forests near her home in Lexington, Virginia, and later ventured farther south-to Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. She commented at the time: “Something strange is happening with the family pictures. © Sally MannĪs her children grew into adolescence, Mann gradually turned from photographing her family to recording the surrounding landscape. While controversial, the book was widely acclaimed for its unsentimental and often startling depiction of childhood.ĭeep South, Untitled (Scarred Tree), 1998, Sally Mann, gelatin silver print. Its representation of nude children and the challenges of growing up raised difficult questions about parental authority, artistic license, and the distinction between public and private images. In 1992 Mann published sixty of these photographs in a book titled Immediate Family. For these, the artist collaborated with her children, sometimes directing them to assume poses and at other times following their lead. While she captured some scenes spontaneously, many she carefully staged. In her portrayals, we witness beauty, bravado, sensuality, and tenderness as well as anger, confusion, and the struggle between attachment and independence. Mann not only recorded the activities and mishaps of childhood but also probed its psychic complexity. The pictures she created evoke the freedom and tranquility of unhurried days spent exploring the nearby river, woods, and fields. She primarily used a large 8 × 10 inch camera to convey the rich detail and texture of everyday life. © Sally Mannįrom 1985 to 1994, Mann photographed her three children-Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia-at the family’s remote summer cabin in the Shenandoah Valley, in western Virginia. Collection of Patricia and David Schulte. Easter Dress, 1986, Sally Mann, gelatin silver print.