Marion Glass: Senior Portfolio: Artist: Sally Mann

During my last meeting with Jeff, he reinforced the fact that I need to surround myself with work by other artists. If you read my post on the class blog, you know that we discussed at length my tendency to separate the artist me from the mother me. It's a bad habit. In order to let the artist show through in my work, Jeff said I needed to be drawing inspiration from other artists all of the time. This is something that I know, but have a hard time accomplishing. When I told him that, Jeff suggested that I first take a look back at artists that I had already discovered and been inspired by in the past. I took this advice to heart.

Sally Mann: we all know who she is, and I even met her once (Griffin did too!) I received my first book of her work, Deep South, from a very dear friend when I was about 16. She has been one of my favorites ever since. I don't know why it never occurred to me to look at her work from the artist-as-mother perspective before, because it seems so obvious to me now. She is a prime example of someone who is both an artist and a mother, and would never compromise on either position - instead, she marries the two. In her book, Immediate Family, published in 1992, Sally Mann displays black and white images of her three young children. The content of the images was controversial (nude children, themes of death and isolation among other more normal childhood circumstances) but she was undeterred. As a mother, she knew she was depicting her children naturally, and as an artist, she knew the best way to present them in a universally and aesthetically appealing manner. She considered the photographs to be "natural through the eyes of a mother, since she has seen her children in every state: happy, sad, playful, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked" (Photographers and photography. "Sally Mann: Mother and American Photographer").

Before becoming a mother myself, I was unsure how I felt towards this body of Mann's work. Now, however, I feel that I can agree with her about the images coming naturally, and I understand that she would not have given them a second thought. I would hesitate to photograph my own child in this manner for display to the world, but I do not think of her negatively for doing so. I love this body of work, and I admire Sally Mann for more than making the best of motherhood. Not only did she create beautiful and lasting images, but she spent time with her children in the process. A few of the images from Immediate Family are posted below.