Deep South [Hardcover]

Sally Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2005

DESCRIPTION: Sally Mann remains among the most innovative, talked-about, and daring artists working with a camera today. DEEP SOUTH is a much anticipated collection of her exquisite, ethereal landscape photographs, taken in the years since she rose to international fame with her groundbreaking book Immediate Family.

The photographs in DEEP SOUTH, many produced with the 19th-century collodion process and a variety of toning techniques, capture what Mann calls the "radical light of the American South." Borrowing methods favored by early masters of landscape photography, Mann bends classic craftsmanship to serve the expressive needs of a heightened contemporary sensibility. Serendipitous technical imperfections, such as light leaks or scratches on negatives, echo the accidental, chaotic workings of time. From ghostly images of historic battlefields to painterly visions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and her native Virginia, Mann's landscape photographs transport the viewer to another time and place.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mann rose to prominence with Immediate Family, a collection of photographs of her children that some saw as emotionally direct and others found disturbingly erotic. Regardless, these photographs, and her subsequent work, demonstrate that Mann has a preternatural eye for light and composition. In this book, Mann, inspired by "a cache of glass negatives...of familiar local places," set off with her camera through the South, using eighteenth century photographic techniques to capture the "radical light of the American South," and the results are fascinating. In Georgia, a column of leaves dissipates into a luminous mist; in Virginia, a scumbled field with an empty cart in the distance suggests a test shot by Matthew Brady. Many of these photographs are startling in their intimations of violence: in the section called "Deep South," Mann depicts the thick shaft of a venerable tree with a wound-like, horizontal slash near the trunk. Mann has also included the inevitable mistakes involved with such a tricky process: indiscernible unhappy accidents and washed-out near-abstractions. This is brave but puzzling. In one of her short essays, Mann writes that the Southern dusk makes "the landscape soft and vague, as if inadequately summoned by some shiftless deity, casually neglectful of the details." A god may enjoy such prerogatives, but shouldn't artists be more mindful? Most of the 65 images here are hauntingly beautiful and offer a stunning tour of a very off-the-beaten-path part of the country.
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Review

"A collection of soulful landscapes." -- Photograph, Sept/Oct 2005

"A stunning collection of tritone photographs reinvents the art of landscape photography..." -- FORECAST, August 2005

"In 'Deep South,' Mann has conjured up a breathtaking photographic elegy to the South and its dark history." -- New York Post, October 2, 2005

"Showcasing a mastery of the genre with some of her finest, most moving work to date." -- Photo-eye, Fall 2005

"The images are deeply arresting, mysterious, quiet, and incredibly beautiful." -- PICTURE magazine, Sept/Oct 2005

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch; 1ST edition (September 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821228765
• ISBN-13: 978-0821228760
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 0.8 x 12.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Color

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent and complex, October 28, 2005

By 

Slim - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deep South (Hardcover)

This is certainly Mann's best work. The landscapes seem destilled from both southern history as well as intimate and collective dreamworlds - both beautiful and intimidating. Look for a truly transcendental image that depicts a wooded landscape scarred by some kind of disaster. The image merges with the scarred emulsion of the glass plate to form a scull like shape that seems to expand into a fragment from and infinite outer space. An ambiguous, singular and extremely rewarding work of art.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transcendent Images, November 21, 2005

By 

James C. Steward "JCS" (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deep South (Hardcover)

Mann is one of the very most gifted photographers of our time. In her landscape work, she finds the perfect marriage of technique and subject matter--marrying the processes of 19th-century photography and historic lenses to the subject matter of great sites of the South, the profound and mysterious ways in which site carries memory. In doing so she has created images that seem to derive from our own memories, carrying the ghostly presences of the past, embodying something we hold in our minds while adding something distinctly new as well. Mann's are transcendent, glorious photographs that should be examined and appreciated by anyone with a discerning eye for great work from our own time.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars moving photos, November 22, 2006

By 

D. Freed (Clinton, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deep South (Hardcover)

I am again deeply moved and awed by Sally Mann's work. Using older photo processes, combined with a deep seeing, these photos create a sense of place that I can feel as well as see. Ms. Mann also writes beautifully about these images and the people and place she is photographing. Though I shoot digitally, I am still inspired and in some ways try to emulate what I'm seeing here

I like the imperfections of these images, but if you want bright colors and tack sharp images, these my not be for you.

David.