Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit [Hardcover]

David Levi Strauss (Author), John Ravenal (Author), Anne Tucker (Author), Sally Mann (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2010

Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit is the first in-depth exploration of this world-renowned artist's approach to the body. Throughout her career, Mann has fearlessly pushed her exploration of the human form, tackling often difficult subject matter and making unapologetically sensual images that are simultaneously bold and lyrical. This beautifully produced publication includes Mann's earliest platinum prints from the late 1970s, Polaroid still lifes, early color work of her children, haunting landscape images, recent self-portraits and nude studies of her husband. These series document Mann's interest in the body as principal subject, with the associated issues of vulnerability and mortality lending an elegiac note to her images. In bringing them together, author and curator John Ravenal examines the varied ways in which Mann's experimental approach, including ambrotypes and gelatin-silver prints made from collodian wet-plate negatives, moves her subjects from the corporeal to the ethereal. Ravenal also supplies a comprehensive introduction as well as individual entries on each series, and essays by David Levi Strauss ("Eros, Psyche, and the Mendacity of Photography") and Anne Wilkes Tucker ("Living Memory") add different, but equally illuminating perspectives to this work. Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit is a must for any serious library of photographic literature, students, scholars, collectors and others interested in her work.
Sally Mann (born 1951) is one of America's most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Mann's many books include What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), and the Aperture titles At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994) and Proud Flesh (2009). She lives in Lexington, Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Few photographers are as unapologetically poetic, or as confrontational, as Sally Mann. Notorious for portraying her children in various states of undress, Ms. Mann takes a long look at herself in her new book. "Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit" features dozens of recent self-portraits, nude figure studies of her husband, and some "C.S.I."-like images from a visit to a "body farm" in Tennessee, where forensic scientists are trained. She has lately been coating her negatives with collodion, and the cracking and dripping that this antiquated wet process is prone to has only enhanced her death-suffused romanticism. --Richard Woodward, Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2010

"As a whole, the book underscores Mann's commitment to following her personal, local interests, unafraid if she runs headlong into taboos. Placed in the larger context of contemporary attitudes toward ageing, illness, death and innocence her images tug at deep-seated contradictions we do not wish to acknowledge. Her gift is that she imbues them with a beauty that knocks the wind from your belly." --The Telegraph, Lucy Davies, 25-Nov-10

"The work is more like a series of question marks as Mann interrogates the perpetual failure of photographic representation in its quest for literal truths. The suggestion here is that only the most profound abstract metaphors even begin to scratch at the surface when the topic is enduring love." --THE Magazine, Dec/Jan-10

"Few photographers are as unapologetically poetic, or as confrontational, as Sally Mann. Notorious for portraying her children in various states of undress, Ms. Mann takes a long look at herself in her new book, `Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit' features dozens of recent self-portraits, nude figure studies of her husband, and some "C.S.I."- like images from a visit to a "body farm" in Tennessee, where forensic scientists are trained. She has lately been coating her negatives with collodion, and the cracking and dripping that this antiquated wet process is prone to has only enhanced her death-suffused romanticism." --The Wall Street Journal, Richard B. Woodward, 17-Dec-10

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Aperture/Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; First Edition edition (November 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597111627
• ISBN-13: 978-1597111621
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 1 x 11.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #458,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The search for the "Self" April 14, 2011

By Carla Rodriguez

Format:Hardcover

Having been an avid follower of Sally Mann's work, The Flesh and The Spirit was an exciting find for me. The book has a special focus on Mann's most famous bodies of work, but also covers her newest projects. Although the photographs speak mostly for themselves, the two essays by David Levi Strauss and Anne Wilkes Tucker are extremely insightful, and focus more on the writer's experience of the work in a way that is not struggling to over explain. John B. Ravenal's unnecessarily verbose deconstruction of Mann's work feels awkward by comparison.

Although Mann is known for her velvety black and white prints, this book also contains some color work in the vein of her Immediate Family series as well as some color photographs within her Matter Lent series that have not been shown before. These color photographs give an insight into Mann's process, and also construct an entirely different perspective and mood than her black and white work. The two formats compliment each other in this collection, expanding the scope of Mann's ideas by showing us how she revisits her subjects.

In her more recent work, Mann changes her focus from exploring her roots as a Southerner and her role as a mother, to examining her present state, the process of aging and the experience of her husband's changing body due to muscular dystrophy. There is a sincerity and awareness in the many ambrotype self-portraits that go beyond a survey of her facial features, but suggest an inward investigation, realizing the "self" as an independent being again. As always in Mann's work, her unflinching presentation of things that are hard to accept or acknowledge is handled in a way that is elegant and compassionate. She treats these subjects with an unconditional love. To use a word coined by Roland Barthes, the punctum of these images have pierced my consciousness, and left me aching for the intimacy and poetry that is Mann's life and work.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sally Mann is a must-own for modern photography May 17, 2011

By Anthony Amorteguy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is not an easy book, with its look into the decay of human flesh. But it, more than many modern photography books, is an unflinching look into life by acknowledging that thing transcendent of the flesh, the spirit. Mann connects her past work with new work in a way that gives insight to her thoughts on her changing view on life, from the aspiring look at life through images of her children to a (can I say) reverent witness of life as it ebbs and flows and eventually ends and returns to the earth.

Taken as a work in its entirety, I think this is a very positive compilation. It is not a collection of photos of decay and death, rather it is photographic collection that tries to put our lives into perspective and hopefully gives the viewer a lesson in hope, worth, and to the value of every minute we have been allotted.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Literally, the flesh...AND...the spirit... December 27, 2010

By Amazon enthusiast

Format:Hardcover

So in fairness to the art world and everything that is good and decent in photographic collections such as the ones Sally Mann continually offers...I must write in direct response to Linda Shapiro's commentary (see alternate book review, here on Amazon). Art is more than the literal images that are projected onto paper (here, purposefully blurred in transfer). Art asks for conversation and analysis. You don't have a response to images in art or in life because of the images themselves. You have a response to them because of YOU: what you bring to the experience of viewing the photo; what you see, or don't see (usually, involving more than physical sight). Subjective?? Most definitely....and it is meant to be so. The same could be said of one individual's response to another specific person and/or any given experience in day-to-day living: it's the combination of observation, stimulus and self that makes any response whatsoever possible. It's what makes one person love, and the other hate. When I view Sally Mann's photos, I am much more interested in my own responses to them than I am in her techniques and intentions in taking them (atlhough I find that interesting, as well). Some folks shut down immediately upon glancing on something that makes them uncomfortable. I say look closer. Listen closely to what you see. Images speak. That being said, if you wish for insight into the worth of this potential purchase, please ignore reviews such as my own (and especially Linda Shapiro's). If you need a reason whether or not to buy this book, let your appreciation for raw talent, unique photographic work/technique and interesting subject matter (that can't be replicated and purchased in mass quantaties at your local Walmart) drive you forward toward the Amazon shopping cart....